The battlespace is changing. America’s adversaries are producing increasingly sophisticated systems, i.e. fifth-generation aircraft, advanced air defense systems, and hypersonic missiles, forcing American forces to adapt to enhanced threats. Yet, simultaneously, America’s adversaries are producing low-tech systems, particularly drones, which despite their humble nature, are requiring American forces to adapt.
Case in point: when F-22 pilot Lt. Col. Dustin Johnson was deployed to the Middle East last year, his squadron’s primary concern was not enemy aircraft, but rather enemy drones and cruise missiles.
“The dangers that most concerned Johnson and his Airmen included Iranian-designed drones and cruise missiles that Tehran and its proxies have employed during he most recent stretch of unrest in the Middle East,” Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.
“We were not necessarily worried about shooting down anybody else’s airplanes,” Johnson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We were primarily there to defend our ground forces against the threats that were being posed by the UAVs in the AOR, as well as the cruise missiles that we’ve seen become more prevalent, both from the Houthis as well as militia groups in the region.”
The fact that the vaunted, fifth-generation F-22 is being used to guard against relatively inexpensive, low-tech drones suggests that rebel forces in the region have devised a formula for mitigating America’s vast technological and financial advantages.
Emerging low-tech threats
Iran and their proxies have deployed their drones to disruptive effect. Last April, Iran deployed over 80 drones in an attack against Israel. American-supplied Israeli fourth-generation aircraft were used to engage the drones—a pairing that in and of itself represented a win for the Iranians. If an inexpensive platform like a drone can be used to divert the attention of a multi-million-dollar aircraft, that constitutes a profound resource imbalance.
Iran isn’t the only entity operating drones in the region. Iranian proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, are also operating Iranian drones.
“It was a very fluid situation,” Johnson said. “Knowing exactly where threats were coming from and when is becoming exponentially more difficult to discern because the threat has just proliferated to the point that it can literally be one person from anywhere with a single UAV.”
Of course, the F-22 wasn’t designed to hunt and kill drones, which weren’t especially relevant during its design period in the 1990s. Rather, the F-22 was designed to be the world’s best air superiority fighter, edging out advanced Russian and Chinese fighters. And while drones don’t pose the same level of threat to the F-22 as an Su-57 or a J-20 would, drones do pose their own set of distinct challenges. Specifically, drones are small and slow, which makes them particularly hard to detect.
“It’s air-to-air, but it is a different type of air-to-air than we’ve ever really trained to before,” Johnson said. “[Drones] pose very significant identification problems.”
Despite the challenges of drone identification, American-made aircraft have adapted proficiently; The Iranian drone attack in April was countered successfully enough to deter Iran from deploying drones in their October attack against Israel, opting instead only to use ballistic missiles.
The F-22 “is both a strategic and tactical asset,” Johnson said. “That gives anybody pause to think about how capable their defenses are when that platform is in theater.”
Harrison Kass is a senior defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
