In the first few days of the combined Israeli-US operations against the Islamic Republic, Iranian ballistic missiles destroyed US-made air defense battery radars critical for missile defense systems to detect, track, and destroy incoming aerial threats. The precision with which Iran was able to strike them should be a wake-up call for regional partners in protecting such key platforms.
Satellite imagery, in addition to photos shared on social media, showed a destroyed AN/TPY-2 radar system for an American THAAD missile battery in Jordan. Another American AN/FPS-132 phased array radar was destroyed in Qatar. Others were damaged in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
In Jordan, the radar was deployed to the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base where it was destroyed. The base is currently home to over 60 American aircraft deployed to the region, including F-35 Lightning II, F-15E Strike Eagles, and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft.
Air‑defense systems are always priority targets during war, and satellite images have shown how quickly such systems can be identified, since they remain static or exposed, especially when commercial satellite imagery shares their locations.
Their loss is extremely expensive (CNN, quoting a 2025 Missile Defense Agency budget, calculates the cost of replacing them at “just shy of half-a-billion dollars”) and time-consuming and also leaves the region more vulnerable to attacks as the situational awareness is degraded.
In addition to the five THAAD systems deployed across the Middle East, the United States also has these radar systems in other strategic locations, including two in the Indo-Pacific, where China is continuing to threaten Taiwan.
While the systems are large and expensive, they are also fragile, and a drone like Iran’s Shahed carrying a small explosive payload can cause enough damage to take them out of the fight for an extended period of time.
Iran doesn’t need to rely on its ballistic missiles to strike these systems; its Shahed attack drones have shown how capable they are in battle. Six American troops were killed in the first days of the war when a drone slammed into their installation, which had no protection against drones.
Flying low and slow, drones have also struck targets across the Middle East, from critical infrastructure like airports to civilian targets like hotels.
However, the Americans and Israelis continue to say that they are degrading Iran’s ability to launch missile and drone attacks. Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said on Thursday that ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90% and drone attacks by 83%.
Protecting the protection
Israeli defense-tech company, SpectralX, has been working on troop and platform survivability. It focuses specifically on how to excel at spectrum management and make troops, vehicles, and equipment harder to detect via visual, thermal, infrared, radar, and multispectral sensors.
Their technologies include advanced camouflage materials, adaptive concealment systems, and signature‑reduction solutions for land, sea, and air. SpectralX has even developed computerized camouflage patterns tailored to any location and adjustable for specific missions.
Speaking to Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post before the start of Operation Roaring Lion (aka Epic Fury), Spectral-X CEO Asaf Picciotto said that camouflage- – especially for air defense batteries – was never a matter of priority for militaries until Russia invaded Ukraine some four years ago.
“Until the war in Ukraine, no one felt the need to talk about camouflage. But the war changed everyone’s perspective,” he said. “Everyone sees the threat posed by cheap drones and advanced sensors.”
According to reports, Iran has been receiving intelligence from Russia about troop deployment and other targets. That intelligence, along with open-source data have provided Iran with pinpoint data, including coordinates of targets.
“It has become clearer that troops need to manage their signature because it’s very easy to do surveillance compared to 10 years ago,” Picciotto said.
Nevertheless, protecting defenses requires a layered approach, combining kinetic interceptors, jamming, and directed energy, such as high-powered lasers (HPL), along with microwave systems (HPM) and camouflage. Unlike missiles or lasers, which target drones one by one, HPM systems emit bursts of powerful electromagnetic energy that can disable the electronics of multiple drones simultaneously, making them ideal for countering swarm tactics by offering rapid, wide-area neutralization without expending costly interceptors.
While HPMs disable electronics across a broad area, lasers provide pinpoint accuracy, making them ideal for neutralizing single, high‑value targets. Together, HPM and laser systems represent a new, layered approach to counter‑UAS defense.
HPM offers rapid neutralization of swarms, while lasers provide precision strikes against individual drones or munitions. This combination reduces reliance on expensive interceptor missiles and ensures that militaries can respond flexibly to diverse threats.
The US and its allies must learn from operational mistakes during the current operations, so that they will have a solution if China decides to strike. Full protection does not come from the isolated trick of destroying launchers; it takes a combination of mobility, deception, layered interception, and electronic warfare to ensure.