When the United States and Israel launched a massive bombing campaign against Iran, military planners fully expected a swift collapse of the regime. In the initial 24 hours of the conflict, allied forces struck roughly 1,000 targets, laying the groundwork for a systematic dismantling of the state. Over the following 37 days, they struck an additional 12,000 targets, severely crippling Iran’s traditional military infrastructure. The high-intensity strikes targeted and killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with the minister of defense and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Yet, more than six months later, the Iranian regime remains entirely intact and arguably possesses greater strategic momentum than before the war. The leadership apparatus was rapidly reconstituted following the death of its top officials, launching immediate counterattacks against Washington and its regional partners. Furthermore, Tehran successfully shut down the Strait of Hormuz, driving up global energy prices and securing newfound political leverage, much to the frustration of U.S. and allied officials.
The unexpected resilience of the Iranian regime highlights a fundamental shift in modern conflict. Iran had spent years preparing for American and Israeli strikes, developing deep underground networks of missile infrastructure and highly dispersed manufacturing facilities that proved impossible to eliminate entirely. Despite a stringent U.S. naval blockade, Tehran imported enough essential goods to prevent total economic collapse. Most significantly, the Islamic Republic leveraged a massive arsenal of low-cost, highly accurate drones and missiles. These inexpensive munitions not only made Iranian counterattacks lethal but also enabled the closure of the strategic strait, effectively deterring further American escalation.
This outcome demonstrates a broader reality: the era of "precise mass"—defined as high-volume, low-cost, precision-guided weaponry—is fully underway. No longer can the U.S. military, or any other global superpower, secure victory in a full-scale war merely by deploying a limited number of exquisite, high-tech systems to overwhelm an adversary. Weaker states can now match stronger opponents through overwhelming offensive barrages. Currently, offense holds a distinct financial advantage over defense. The cost of effective interceptors remains exorbitantly high compared to cheap attack drones and missiles, making comprehensive defense financially unsustainable. Militaries simply cannot afford to endlessly intercept $35,000 Shahed-136 attack drones using $4 million Patriot missiles.
At the same time, the conflict in Iran confirms that advanced technology retains a vital role in modern combat. The United States achieved significant success in striking high-value Iranian targets largely due to sophisticated artificial intelligence systems capable of identifying and recommending targets at unprecedented speeds. American precision weapons remain considerably harder to intercept than their cheaper counterparts and boast a higher probability of completely destroying targets in a single strike. Nevertheless, the world is absorbing the lessons of Ukraine and Iran, recognizing that the future of warfare demands the mass production and deployment of disposable weapon systems, fundamentally altering the global military balance.
SET IN ONE’S WAYS
In military history, it often appears that wealthy nations reap all the benefits of new technological capabilities. However, the reality is far more complex. If a military innovation is exceptionally expensive, it naturally favors rich incumbents. Conversely, if a technology is inexpensive yet demands radical organizational restructuring to adopt effectively, less wealthy nations can leverage it just as rapidly—if not faster. Powerful militaries frequently struggle when forced to enact disruptive organizational changes because their past successes have created entrenched bureaucracies and institutional biases that hinder adaptation. As a result, they find it difficult to integrate new capabilities that cannot easily plug into their established legacy structures.
Precise mass represents precisely this kind of disruptive capability. Conventionally powerful militaries are organized around small numbers of exquisite, high-cost, difficult-to-produce platforms and weapons, such as Tomahawk missiles and F-35 fighter jets. Entire military units plan and train around these scarce systems, instilling a culture of extreme caution to avoid waste and minimize the risk of loss. By contrast, precise mass requires units to move rapidly, prioritize speed over perfection, and treat munitions as expendable. This cultural and structural divergence helps explain why the United States has struggled to adapt to precise mass, despite inventing precision guidance and maintaining the world’s most formidable military.
Locked out of acquiring certain advanced military capabilities due to international isolation, Iran was compelled to heavily invest in long-term, one-way attack systems and inexpensive ballistic missiles. This forced adaptation resulted in a conflict where Tehran vastly outperformed expectations. Incapable of matching the U.S. military blow-for-blow with expensive exquisite weapons, Iran utilized high volumes of relatively accurate drones and cheap missiles to target American bases and regional critical infrastructure. While the United States inflicted billions of dollars in damage in return, it did so by rapidly depleting its stockpiles of Tomahawks, SM-6 missiles, and other high-end systems, forcing Washington into a difficult scramble to resupply its own forces and key allies in Taiwan and Ukraine.
Thanks to meticulous preparation, Tehran absorbed the extensive damage. Years before the outbreak of the war, Iran constructed vast underground networks of missile infrastructure spread across its territory that proved impervious to coalition airstrikes. The dispersion of its manufacturing facilities subverted the core assumptions that have guided American air campaigns since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which historically prioritized the complete eradication of existing weapons stockpiles.
The conflict has shown that weaker states are no longer priced out of the global military power game, just as stronger states are no longer guaranteed the upper hand in major engagements. Consequently, countries around the world are rapidly investing in precise mass. North Korea has acquired Shahed technology and production equipment via Russia to develop its own uncrewed vehicles. A Nigerian firm has contracted a Turkish manufacturer to build 100,000 one-way attack drones at domestic assembly facilities. Poland dramatically increased its spending on drones and counterdrone systems from roughly $27 million in late 2023 to approximately $6.9 billion, establishing local manufacturing plants. Six European nations—including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—signed a letter of intent to jointly develop long-range attack drones costing under $100,000. Saudi Arabia has unveiled a domestic attack drone modeled after the Shahed, while Japan’s governing party has requested a record $55.6 billion defense budget largely earmarked for large quantities of attack drones.
OFFENSE OVER DEFENSE
The war in Iran demonstrates that nearly any military can acquire vast arsenals of precision strike weapons priced in the tens of thousands of dollars. Defense, however, remains remarkably expensive, with reliable interceptors rarely costing less than $1 million. To repel Iran’s barrage of precise mass, Washington expended approximately 65 percent of its Patriot interceptor inventory and 35 percent of its THAAD interceptors, leaving dwindling reserves. American partners across the Middle East face similar depletion of their air defense networks.
This vulnerability was largely predictable. Since the end of the Cold War, Western defense strategies focused almost exclusively on exquisite systems and antimissile defenses designed to counter high-end ballistic and cruise missile threats. Policymakers largely assumed future conflicts would be brief, failing to prioritize scalable defensive architectures.
Governments worldwide are now racing to develop cheaper defensive options, experimenting with directed energy weapons, high-power microwave systems, and proximity-fuzed interceptors that destroy incoming drones without direct physical impact. The international market is gradually responding, with Ukraine fielding interceptor drones costing only $1,400 apiece, alongside similar innovations from European and Gulf-based startups. However, none of these cost-effective defensive technologies are currently ready for large-scale deployment.
The conflict also underscored the utility of American artificial intelligence capabilities. In recent years, AI platforms that aggregate intelligence data and generate rapid targeting recommendations for commanders have become indispensable. Washington’s deployment of systems like the Maven Smart System enabled a dramatic increase in strike frequency. While not flawless—an intelligence failure reportedly led to the tragic targeting of an Iranian school—the system improved overall targeting efficiency. This acceleration of targeting speed, however, introduces heightened risks of automation bias, where humans outsource critical decisions to imperfect algorithms.
Crucially, Washington’s gains in military AI stemmed from superior data architecture and the integration of existing models rather than the latest speculative frontier technologies. This indicates that the race toward artificial general intelligence is not the primary driver of AI’s role in modern warfare. As open-source models achieve parity, rival militaries will easily build similar decision-support tools. For instance, Anthropic revealed that Iran previously attempted to use its Claude large language model to assist in targeting U.S. forces in the region.
CHEAP SHOTS
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran signals that the age of precise mass has permanently arrived, illustrating how less powerful nations can effectively stymie global superpowers on the modern battlefield. Major powers are also adopting offensive doctrines centered on precise mass, driven by the stark economic reality that defense against cheap munitions remains far more expensive than attack.
As the international community absorbs this lesson, the United States must adapt accordingly. The traditional reliance on expensive, hard-to-produce weaponry is no longer sufficient to secure victory and protect allies, particularly as critical missile stockpiles are drained at rates that threaten deterrence capabilities elsewhere, including against China. Ideally, Washington would pivot rapidly by scaling precise mass, investing heavily in low-cost defensive technologies, and fundamentally restructuring military organizations to employ these tools effectively.
American defense officials, long conditioned to fight exclusively with exquisite systems, may encounter institutional resistance to this necessary shift, especially if defense budgets face contraction and lead to the prioritization of legacy capabilities. Even if the Pentagon initiates reforms, maintaining competent military leadership and civilian oversight through continuous political cycles remains a persistent challenge.
New technological innovations have significantly narrowed the military gap between wealthy states and their adversaries regarding offensive capabilities. If the United States intends to preserve its strategic edge, it must embrace precise mass and abandon legacy assumptions inherited from the post-Cold War era.
