America’s missile and air defense status quo is not sustainable

In its April 13 attack against Israel, Iran launched a combined 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles. Israeli and allied defense systems intercepted and destroyed nearly all of these, resulting in zero casualties and minimal damage.

Although this is certainly a testament to the supremacy of Israeli and American missile defense capabilities, this is not sustainable. Experts now warn that Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system risks being overwhelmed in the future by to the sheer volume of cheap Iranian-produced drones and missiles.

After Israel’s audacious and well executed strikes late last month, which eliminated top Hezbollah and Hamas commanders, the U.S. military once again deployed multiple fixed-wing and missile defense assets to bolster Israel’s ability to defend against what many surmised could be a retaliation by Iran and or Hezbollah.

The U.S. must take heed of the lessons learned in April, particularly the high cost of employing our aging, albeit effective, defense systems. Even though a second attack on the same scale as in April has not yet materialized, the U.S. and Israel must be prepared for any eventuality.

Consider that Iran’s six-hour offensive in April cost the Ayatollah’s regime some $35 million, while the cost of Israel’s defense came to an estimated $550 million. That’s over 1,400 percent greater and already accounts for 2 percent of the Israel supplemental package passed in April.

Iran’s April offensive does not exist in a vacuum. As part of the ongoing tensions in the Middle East, U.S. forces have experienced 219 rocket and drone strikes in the last 9 months, including the attack at Tower 22 in Jordan, which claimed the lives of three U.S. servicemembers. In March 2024 alone, the U.S. Navy reported 28 Houthi-fired drones aimed at targets in the Red Sea, with further, more sophisticated attacks likely to happen in the future. Here, the average cost of a drone is $20,000-$30,000, whereas U.S. defensive assets cost on average $500,000 per shot.

The size of Iran’s missile and drone stockpiles, its partnerships with other U.S. adversaries such as Russia, and the Biden-Harris administration’s lingering policy of appeasement and lax sanction enforcement means that Iran has the capability to continue to launch many more attacks in the future.

But the U.S. would do well to take some lessons from the war in Ukraine, in which an already thinly stretched Ukrainian military has been forced to divert resources and personnel to countering Russian drone and missile barrages. This has decreased Ukraine’s overall ability to maneuver defensively. 

The same goes for Communist China’s posturing in the Indo-Pacific. China has been paying attention to how our air defense systems perform and has leaned hard into developing its missile attack systems and drone capabilities as a means to undermine U.S. advantages in the air and sea. 

Importantly, the U.S. taxpayer can’t continue to foot the bill when there are innovative and far cheaper solutions out there. There are no silver bullet antidotes, but the Defense Department needs to be realistic when it comes to funding levels, the needs of troops on the ground and the current capacities of the U.S. industrial base.

When it comes to short-term solutions, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Congress should expand its focus on quickly fielding and evaluating new solutions such as our Directed Energy systems, which are currently in service in low numbers. We need to look at cheaper but effective kinetic solutions and work to produce those products at a greater scale. We need to ensure that our defense portfolio is varied, sustainable and dynamic.

Above all, it’s critical for the U.S. to leverage venture capitalists and rapid development agencies to innovate and produce cutting-edge air defense systems. We must reward those brave enough to take risks and make big dreams into reality at the speed of relevancy. This is the single biggest competitive advantage the U.S. has compared to our adversaries, now and in the future.

In the long term, the U.S. needs to take a close look at how we develop our weapons systems. We need to put a stop to over-bloated programs that have so far been deemed “too big to fail.” This will free up funding and resources to be put towards air defense systems that we know will work. This would also allow us to scale up our domestic industrial base and produce components for air defense systems in far greater quantities — a victory for American workers and our national security.

With each ongoing conflict, Congress and our defense establishment needs to ensure we have the right systems in place and in abundance. Cost-effective air defense systems to counter cheaper drones and missiles must be our No. 1 priority. After all, history makes clear that fighting tomorrow’s war with the equipment and methods of yesterday is not a sustainable recipe for success on the battlefield.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R) represents Texas’ 4th District. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.