【Text by Carrie Glick, Translation by Whale Life】

In February 1991, after the aerial campaign of the Gulf War, U.S. commanders were convinced that the coalition's air power had already destroyed the main forces of the Iraqi Republican Guard long before the ground offensive began. However, a later review by the U.S. General Accounting Office (now known as the Government Accountability Office) found that this judgment was wrong and identified the reasons.

Throughout the entire campaign, the Iraqi Republican Guard belonged to one of the "most difficult-to-measure" categories of targets. Approximately one-third of the F-117 stealth fighter strike reports lacked supporting evidence or contradicted other data. This led to the actual success rate of F-117 strikes being between 41% and 60%. Commanders mistakenly believed that a reduction in enemy activity equated to the physical destruction of their combat capability.

This analytical fallacy has repeatedly occurred in subsequent U.S.-led campaigns—from the Kosovo War to today.

Ten days after the air strikes against Iran began, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine told reporters at the Pentagon: "Since the operation began, the number of one-time attack drones launched by Iran has decreased by 83%." He pointed out that this data indicated that strikes on drone launch facilities and production sites were systematically undermining Tehran's ability to threaten the Gulf region. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also made a similar interpretation, stating: "This data has remained low, proving the effectiveness of the operation."

On March 10 local time, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, announced at a press briefing that the number of ballistic missile launches by Iran had dropped by 90% since the start of the conflict, and the number of one-time drone launches had dropped by 83%, attributing this to the effectiveness of the U.S. and allied air defense operations. Screenshot from video

The facts may be so. But this statistical data conflates two fundamentally different issues at the analytical level: what Iran is currently doing, and what military capabilities and potential it still possesses? The 83% figure reflects a decrease in observed drone launch frequency—a "behavioral indicator." If this change in behavior is directly taken as evidence of the destruction of Iran's drone capabilities, it could create a misleading picture of how much the threat has been eliminated.

This distinction is crucial. If Washington concludes that the Iranian drone threat has been largely eliminated, when in fact it has not, the U.S. might impose pressure beyond Tehran's capacity to bear. The result could be an escalation of conflict, which would not only overwhelm the Gulf's air defense systems but also threaten global markets.

Behavioral indicators are not equivalent to battle damage assessments

The U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Doctrine divides battle damage assessment (BDA) into three levels:

1. Physical Damage Assessment: Measuring the observable physical damage to the target.

2. Functional Damage Assessment: Estimating the remaining combat capability of the target after a single strike.

3. Target System Damage Assessment: Assessing whether a campaign is weakening the enemy's overall combat capability.

Each level of assessment requires progressively more evidence. The physical damage can usually be verified directly through imagery and strike reports. Functional and system-level assessments require additional intelligence support. The Joint Doctrine states that functional damage "is not always directly observable," and the U.S. Air Force warns that system-level assessments are "data-intensive processes," requiring "weeks or even months to accumulate data."

The 83% figure mentioned in the Pentagon brief does not belong to any of these levels of battle damage assessment. According to the doctrine, it is a "battle damage indicator"—a measurable phenomenon that helps form formal assessments, but cannot replace them. In this case, the decrease in Iranian drone launch numbers became an indicator, but it did not explain the reasons behind the decline.

Hegseth himself acknowledged this. He said that battle damage assessment "takes time." That's correct. Existing data supports the claim of a drop in launch rates, but it is not sufficient to support the stronger conclusion drawn in the briefing—that the Iranian drone threat is being systematically eliminated. A drop in launch rate aligns with this conclusion, but it also aligns with several other possibilities.

Upper image: Daily changes in the number of ballistic missiles (light blue), cruise missiles (dark blue), and drones (orange) launched by Iran toward the UAE from February 28 to March 17; lower image: daily changes in the number of ballistic missiles and drones launched by Iran toward Saudi Arabia from March 1 to 16. Source: Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S. think tank

Why did Iran reduce its drone launches?

At least three reasonable explanations exist for the decrease in Iranian drone launches:

First, tactical recalibration. It is reported that Moscow is sharing its developed drone tactics in the Ukraine war with Tehran, including coordinated routing strategies designed to evade air defenses, as well as overhead satellite images used to improve targeting accuracy. Tehran may be using this time to learn, adapt, and refine its strategies.

Second, deliberate stockpiling for larger coordinated attacks. Russian strikes in Ukraine sometimes follow a similar pattern. Moscow has frequently stockpiled ballistic missiles and drones, then launched punitive attacks aimed at overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses, forcing interceptors to be consumed faster than they can be replenished. If Iran has learned from this, the decrease in daily launch numbers may reflect stockpiling rather than depletion.

Third, the operational focus may have shifted to the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran has warned ships not to pass through the strait, saying that vessels "may face the risk of missile or sporadic drone attacks." These are not empty threats. Reports indicate that Tehran has laid dozens of mines in the waterway, and recent images show oil tankers have been attacked. Due to the risk of attack, the U.S. Navy has refused almost daily requests from the shipping industry for military escort.

If Washington attempts to deploy mine-sweeping ships (which the U.S. currently lacks resources for), or provides naval escorts to assist commercial vessels, Tehran is likely to want to position its missile and drone stockpiles to deal with such confrontations rather than conducting intensive bombing in the Gulf. Therefore, the decrease in launch numbers may reflect a reallocation of forces to the Strait of Hormuz, not a decline in overall capability.

Finally, Tehran may simply have concluded that a lower but sustainable launch rate is sufficient to maintain coercive pressure on Gulf countries while preserving inventory for a conflict that could last several months. Strategies for dealing with attrition do not require giving your all every day.

Each of these explanations aligns with the observed decrease in launch numbers.

Iran's attack patterns are more consistent with "tactical recalibration" than "capacity constraints." In the first ten days of the war, Iran's strike patterns followed a carefully designed escalation sequence: first military facilities, then logistics hubs and communication nodes, and finally energy infrastructure. Each category of target serves different coercive purposes. This targeting sequence is not typical of an enemy suffering from a lack of ammunition, but rather more consistent with a deliberate inventory management strategy.

Hegseth himself hinted at the risks, warning: "If the enemy can simply wait for the right moment to project power, that will be a big problem."

Why is it difficult to quantify drone battle damage?

Assessing drone battle damage requires completing three steps: identifying the target, executing the strike, and verifying the damage effect—which is precisely what the Shahed-136 drone was designed to complicate.

This type of drone weighs about 200 kilograms and does not require a transport-erect-launch (TEL) vehicle, dedicated launch facilities, or fixed infrastructure. It can be launched from an inclined rail mounted on a pickup truck, and the operators can quickly move positions after launching, minimizing the risk of retaliation.

Because there are no fixed launch sites and no observable signs of pre-launch preparation, it is difficult to distinguish a warehouse full of drones from an empty one. The Shahed-136 drone was designed specifically to thwart the location methods effective against ballistic missiles, which often rely on large vehicles, fixed infrastructure, and longer preparation times, thereby generating detectable signature signals.

Iran demonstrates the Shahed-136 drone and the truck-mounted inclined launch device

That said, the U.S.-Israel joint intelligence gathering operation has achieved some results in locating fixed production/storage infrastructure. The U.S. Central Command reported that over 6,000 Iranian targets had been struck, including multiple drone launch and storage facilities.

However, Iran's drone production capacity is highly decentralized and widespread, making it extremely difficult to identify and strike its entire supply chain. For drones that have already been produced, the challenge is even greater. The Shahed-136 drone does not require specialized storage facilities, and it produces minimal identifiable signature signals before launch. In many cases, there may be no observable targets available for strikes at all.

The uncertainty surrounding Iran's inventory further complicates this issue. Pre-conflict estimates of the number of drones ranged from thousands to more than ten thousand. This huge range of estimates alone makes precise battle damage assessment almost impossible. Since the outbreak of this conflict, Iran has launched over 2,000 drones. Even if we assume that production has completely stopped (there is currently no conclusive evidence to support this assumption), Iran may still have a large inventory.

History offers a cautionary precedent. During the "Scud hunt" operation in 1991, the U.S. searched for Iraqi mobile ballistic missile launchers under the favorable conditions of absolute air superiority and extensive intelligence support. However, they failed to confirm the destruction of any launch system.

Compared to the Shahed-136 drone, which is smaller, less dependent on infrastructure, and faster to deploy, yet harder to detect, this pattern has repeated itself in subsequent conflicts. The post-Kosovo War battle damage assessment in 1999 found that most of Serbia's mobile military assets (including surface-to-air missile batteries and artillery) survived.

The Yemen campaign is the latest test of the same issue. Between January 2024 and January 2025, the U.S. and British coalition conducted over 900 airstrikes aimed at destroying Houthi rebel missile and drone launch points (many of which are derivative systems of the Shahed-136). However, they failed to effectively suppress the launch activities. Part of the reason was that these weapon systems are dispersed, mobile, and hard to locate. This pattern is likely to apply to Iran's Shahed-136 drones. They are small, mobile, and quick to transfer, and their design clearly draws on decades of experience from U.S. air operations.

During the Gulf War, the U.S.-led coalition launched a large-scale operation to hunt for Iraqi Scud missile launchers but failed to confirm any actual results.

Questions analysts and decision-makers should ask

The above analysis is not intended to argue that the air strikes have failed, or that the U.S. battle damage data is purely fictional. The U.S.-Israel coalition's strikes may indeed have imposed substantial constraints on Iran's missile and drone attacks. The observed decrease in launch numbers is significant from an operational perspective. But the key question is: what does this decrease actually indicate? The 83% figure alone cannot answer this question.

If analysts and decision-makers wish to gain a deeper understanding of the current situation, they should ask the following key questions:

First, what tangible evidence (such as post-strike imagery, signals intelligence, or human intelligence) corroborates the 83% data, besides the behavioral change itself?

Second, what is the current estimate of Iran's remaining drone inventory? What methodology was used to arrive at this estimate? What is the confidence interval?

Third, has an independent assessment been conducted on Iran's drone component supply chain, apart from the strike data on assembly facilities? Or is the conclusion about the decline in Iran's drone production entirely based on the destruction of assembly hubs?

Fourth, how is the efficiency of the Gulf countries' air defense interception changing? How long can regional air defense systems sustain the consumption of interceptor missiles to defend against such drone attacks?

Asking these questions helps distinguish between two entirely different campaign trajectories: one that results in lasting physical damage, and another that merely suppresses the enemy's observable behavior, leaving its underlying combat capability and production capacity intact.

The findings of the investigation into the "Desert Storm" operation were not released until six years after the war ended. Operational systems like the Shahed-136, designed to conceal production, storage, and launch phases, have widened the gap between "confident assessments" and "ground truths." Hegseth was right about one thing: battle damage assessment "takes time."

On March 11, the day after the Pentagon released its briefing, Iran launched its 37th wave of attacks, targeting multiple locations in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, as well as several ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Whatever the 83% figure measures, it has not reflected an opponent whose combat capability—let alone fighting will—has been completely eliminated.

(The original article was published on the U.S. military commentary website "War on the Rocks," titled "Don't Count Launches: Misreading Iran's Drone Capabilities." The translation is provided for reference only and does not represent the views of Observer Network.)

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Original: toutiao.com/article/7619887002615333395/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.