Das eklatante Versehen im US-Kriegsplan

The United States and Israel took at least a month to prepare their attack on Iran—but one gap in their planning became clear during the first days of the war, Simon Shuster and Nancy A. Youssef report.

The U.S. and its allies used their most advanced anti-aircraft systems to shoot down swarms of cheap, easily replaceable Iranian drones. The leaders of Ukraine, who have more experience countering these drones than any other country, saw obvious flaws in this approach—but no one from the U.S. bothered to ask Ukraine to share its expertise in how to defend against drones before starting the offensive in Iran, Shuster and Youssef report. 

“In the fall of 2022, Iran sold the Kremlin designs for a drone known as the Shahed-136, and Russia has since produced and launched tens of thousands of them in its war with Ukraine,” Shuster and Youssef write. Engineers in Ukraine have developed a variety of ways to shoot down the drones, such as lasers and AI-enabled interceptor drones, some of which cost as little as $1,000. Their overall success rate against Shaheds stands at about 90 percent, according to Ukrainian-government estimates.

“I have not received any direct requests,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Monday. That changed the following day, when Zelensky began a flurry of calls with U.S. allies in the Middle East and agreed to send them personnel and equipment to help defend against such attacks.

“The American failure to adopt lessons from the war in Ukraine extends across administrations and political parties when it comes to both producing attack drones and developing the means to protect U.S. forces and assets from such attacks,” Shuster and Youssef continue at the link. “Both tasks have taken on new urgency as the U.S. military confronts enemy drones on the battlefield.” 

Read more: [https://theatln.tc/WWh039j4](https://theatln.tc/WWh039j4)— Katie Anthony, associate editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*

It’s not just US, the whole of NATO is moving pretty slowly in this regard – adopting to drone warfare.

It changed many things, Ukrainian soldiers that come for training in NATO countries are complaining that they are being taught outdated tactics which don’t work in Ukraine. I.e. they are taught about reconnaissance to be conducted by people going with binoculars. This is not done anymore in Ukraine – it’s way too slow, dangerous and less precise.

Another thing is combined automated systems to conduct warfare – data from different sources is distributed to appropriate destinations. Commanders see the data as soon as it is discovered.

Oh, I’m sure there were smart people in the Pentagon screaming about this, just as they were screaming about how bad of an idea it was to start the war in the first place.

But I imagine the top responded with something like:

Woke libtards with their fancy WestPoint degrees, we got big muscles and big guns!

*cut to drunk Hegseth trying and failing to do a proper pull-up*

You ever see those videos of China using thousands of drones to create characters and imagery in the sky? I don’t think they are overlooking the power of drones.