According to The New York Times, President Trump told reporters last week that lasers would soon be able to do the work of Patriot missile interceptors “at a lot less cost.”
“The laser technology that we have now is incredible,” Trump said. “It’s coming out pretty soon.”
Reports The NYT: “The idea of using lasers this way isn’t new. American military leaders have spent decades trying to develop this technology, pursuing a dream of a weapon that can hit a target at the speed of light and never run out of ammunition.”
There were reports on YouTube that the US Navy has, for the first time, used high-energy laser weapons to shoot down and destroy drones in active combat off the coast of Iran. But the report remains unconfirmed by mainstream media.
If true, some observers say this is the most important military development since the atomic bomb. The NYT reports that “high-energy lasers can burn drones in the sky like a blowtorch but are stymied by weather.”
Using laser weapons could be an answer to the cost problem of the US and its allies in the Gulf when Iran started swarming Middle East skies with their $20,000 Shahed drones. The US and its Arab allies were responding with THAAD interceptors costing $10 million each and Patriot interceptors costing $3-4 million each to shoot the Shaheds down. Iran was winning the math.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the US spent approximately $5.7 billion on interceptors (such as the SM-3 and Patriot systems) in just the first week of the war. And the US cannot produce replenishments fast enough.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained that Iran is estimated to produce over 100 missiles a month, while the US currently produces only six to seven interceptors per month.
As a result, the US hastily redeployed THAAD missile batteries from South Korea to the Middle East to improve their defenses.
But long before the first bombs were dropped, the US and Israel were already using high technology to build a vast targeting system that enabled them to more accurately pinpoint targets.
The Economist explained that the US and Israel can “identify targets more precisely and more quickly than ever before possible. And they can produce targets with such pace, scope and precision because of their greatly increased use of software — including, to a limited extent thus far, artificial intelligence. Both countries’ armed forces now generate and hit targets at an industrial scale.”
That’s why, The Economist observed, “the display of American and Israeli firepower in Iran has been more fast-paced and overwhelming than in either of the first two Persian Gulf wars.” Pete Hegseth, America’s war secretary, boasted that “Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003.”
In the first 72 hours alone, it was claimed that the US forces struck around 1,700 targets and destroyed more than 200 Iranian ballistic missile launchers, dramatically reducing potential for missile and drone attacks across the region.
Other news sources report that specialists from the US Space Command and US Cyber Command were largely responsible for executing a silent offensive before the first bomb was dropped.
“Working from space and cyberspace, they disrupted Iran’s military networks — cutting communications, blinding radar systems and severing the digital links that allow forces to coordinate. By the time the kinetic phase of Operation Epic Fury began, Iranian defenses were already struggling to see, communicate or respond effectively.”
General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, credited the space and cyber operations as the true vanguard of the campaign. Many analysts now describe the operation as showing how space-enabled warfare in modern combat is undertaken.
Still, all that high technology didn’t prevent a deadly mistake in targeting. On Feb. 28, 175 people — most of them children — were killed after a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, was hit by an American Tomahawk cruise missile.
On March 11, The NYT reported the Pentagon had determined the strike was the result of a targeting mistake based on outdated intelligence. The target was a nearby naval base.
In the meantime, China is observing from the sidelines, getting insights on American military operations. Intelligence reports and defense analysts believe that China is even providing significant indirect and direct intelligence support to Iran.
China’s Jilin-1 network now reportedly includes more than 100 high-resolution imaging satellites, capable of capturing detailed images of military activity from space. Experts say the constellation is actively monitoring US carrier strike groups and airbases in the region.
Iran has also reportedly transitioned its military architecture from US GPS to China’s BeiDou-3 system. This provides Iranian forces with encrypted, high-precision signals for missile and drone guidance that are significantly more resistant to Western electronic jamming.
Intelligence assessments from The Washington Post highlight that Chinese-derived data provides Iran with enhanced targeting capabilities for its ballistic missiles and early warning systems to detect incoming US strikes as well as real-time tracking of US naval movements in the Persian Gulf.
Despite official Chinese denial of intelligence sharing with Iran, the consensus among Western analysts, according to Al-Jazeera, is that Chinese technological “connective tissue” — radar, satellite feeds and navigation — is critical to Iran’s current defensive and offensive operations.
How do all these affect us and our defense posture?
Miserably. Our military is probably not even familiar with tech-driven warfare.
The Philippine Military Academy should be transformed to become the best training institution on cyber related war technologies. Given how expensive traditional weapons are, our scarce budget resources can be used more efficiently.
Our military should start training for today’s and tomorrow’s wars, not the wars of the past. Our generations of digital natives should take more prominent roles in training our armed forces.
We must learn lessons from this ongoing war. It’s high technology or nothing.
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco
