Drones and Mass Salvo Attacks: Lessons Learned from the American Defense of Israel November 2025
Aaron Stein
On a cool night in April 2024, the Iranian military surprised American and coalition war planners. It launched a massive salvo of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel, following an Israeli air attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus. The Israeli attack in Damascus killed a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps General. The April 13 Iranian attack predated the start of Operation Rising Lion, the 12-day air war Israel launched against the Islamic Republic in June 2025. However, the multinational layered defense of Israel in April is revelatory, both in terms of how the US military and its allies were able to blunt a massed air attack and how that air attack seriously challenges how Western militaries are trained and equipped for combat. The lessons from the night of April 13 have direct relevance for the future of global security, specifically on the NATO-Russian border in the Baltics and Poland, and throughout the Middle East. This chapter is based on a series of interviews the author conducted with US personnel directly involved in combat operations that night.1 The defense of Israel and US forces in the region that night was truly unprecedented, and has been overlooked as a potential turning point for the future of air combat. The successes should be replicated throughout all European and USallied militaries. However, the tools that enabled success are not as widely proliferated through the air and air defense arms of US allied militaries, which means that much of Europe will remain uniquely exposed to Russian drone incursions for the near future. The broader lesson is also more about how to think about defense against massed salvos of cheap munitions. In publication after publication, and in industry briefing after industry briefing, the focus is on creating products that can shoot down drones cheaply and efficiently2—in short, building an interceptor with a price point similar to the drone being fired. This is certainly part of the answer to this problem. Yet, the challenge is far larger than a simple cost-exchange calculation. The defense against massed drones and ballistic missiles is more about standardizing equipment, sharing data across different services and nations, and reconceptualizing air and missile defense for a combined arms approach. In short: Cross cueing capability that allows for “any targe/any sensor” weapons capability for air and ground-based shooters. 1 Author interviews were conducted in October 2025. 2 See for example: Wes Rumbaugh, “Cost and Value in Air and Missile Defense Intercepts,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 13, 2024, https://www.csis.org/analysis/cost-and-value-air-and-missile-defense-intercepts; Lara Seligman and Matt Berg, “A $2M Missile vs. a $2,000 Drone: Pentagon Worried over Cost of Houthi Attacks,” Politico, December 19, 2023, https://www. politico.com/news/2023/12/19/missile-drone-pentagon-houthi-attacks-iran-00132480.
This report is part of the six part series Operation Rising Lion: A Military and Regional Perspective