EMSO Lessons from Iran: What Comes Next

From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller and John Knowles analyze the US military's operational lessons from Operation Epic Fury against Iran, contrasting them with prolonged debates over Ukraine. They argue that

Key takeaways

Directed energy systems (high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves) are finally transitioning from R&D to full-scale production contracts following lessons from Operation Epic Fury.
The Pentagon exhibits a 'kinetic bias,' repeatedly choosing to buy more interceptors despite knowing the cost asymmetry against cheap drones and missiles.

Main topics

Operation Epic Fury and Iran lessons
Directed energy production and operationalization

Notable quotes

"The paradox is that the more expensive it is, the easier it is to do because it's a material problem to them. It's the EW is way bigger than a material problem."

Conclusion

The episode underscores a critical institutional failure where financial expenditure is mistaken for strategic

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) This episode is brought to you by Keysight. Keysight's eWASP, Electronic Warfare Advanced Simulation Platform, enables high-fidelity, scalable RF threat simulation and analysis across the EW lifecycle, from software-in-the-loop to hardware mission validation, helping accelerate mission readiness while reducing risk. For more information, visit keysight.com slash find slash eWASP. Speaker 2 (0:41) Welcome to From the Crow's Nest. I'm your host, Ken Miller from the Association of Old Crows. As always, it's great to be here with you. In this episode, I welcome back into the studio, a friend and colleague, John Knowles, who is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Electromagnetic Dominance, AOC's official monthly publication, also known as the GED. John, it's great to have you back here on the show. Great to hear from you again. How are you doing? Speaker 3 (1:06) Good. I'm doing really well. First day of... fall and first day of New England day. And thanks for having me back on. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:12) You, you wait nine months for summer and it only lasts three. I don't know why that is every year, but, uh, you know, let that sink in. But, uh, I was kind of disappointed that, uh, summer went by so fast, but, uh, glad to be able to kick off a new season with you. I think the last time I had you on was in spring in April, uh, just prior to, uh, some of our work on AOC Europe and Asia and some of the episodes over the summer that kind of looked globally about what's going on in the world of EMSO. And now as we're entering the fall here, of course, our attention is going to turn back to a lot of the US. We have a lot going on with the budget. We have, of course, from a political standpoint, we have elections coming up, which is shaping how we talk about a lot of these security initiatives and global security matters. And so I wanted to... have you on the show to kind of level set the conversation moving forward as we approach December, where we hopefully will have a new defense budget. We have AOC US coming up. I know you're already thinking about that as well from an editor standpoint. So just thank you for joining me here. About four months, I think, since we've had you on the show, five months. What's been on your mind over the summer as you've been kind of keeping tabs on I know you were at AOC Europe and you've done some other stuff over the summer. What's been on your mind in terms of developments in the EMSO community? Speaker 3 (2:35) I think the biggest thing I've been thinking about is that it's really a shift in a way, but in many ways, not a shift. And that is a year ago, I'd be, if we were talking, I'd say, you know, we're thinking about lessons from Ukraine and things like that. And now I'm thinking about lessons from Epic Fury. So I'm thinking about that's informing a lot of the things that I'm thinking about from. are following from force structure and debates, budget, obviously, things like that. So we are learning some direct lessons now instead of sort of indirectly through the Ukrainians. And so I think that's the, you know, we're learning the things I'm thinking about, big trends that play off of that are, we are operationalizing directed energy and going into production with that. So I think that's a big deal. Talked about direct energy for quite a while. And Tony. Asuzo to give you a preview of it. The October jet he wrote about the DE, especially high energy lasers, but also high power microwaves. They're reaching into full scale production contracts. And that's a, you know, that's a big, I think that's a big moment for the EW community because a lot of that operational directed energy community has largely been an R &D community for almost 40 years. Now we're shifting over to actually practicing it on a larger scale. And that's probably where it. AOC can really help out the direct energy community in bringing that operational knowledge and experience we have. And I'm not sure how that plays out. You and I have talked about this for years, but I don't know exactly how that plays out. I don't know if you can take an EWO and, you know, but they're probably the closest thing you have to a schooled practitioner of direct energy in the operational world. So I think that's a big deal. Speaker 2 (4:18) So what about EpicFury is... Kind of putting the emphasis on operationalized and directed energy in terms of a lesson learned. Because, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned that kind of the shift away, not that we're not paying attention, but we've talked a lot about lessons learned in Ukraine. And these themes, you know, they keep coming up, they're the same, you know, yeah, it's a spectrum fight and it's overly chaotic and congested and it's led to, you know, mass production of... unmanned systems and different exquisite capabilities and different things that need to kind of break through that. But the themes haven't seen, there hasn't been really a lot of change in terms of the conversation with Ukraine. So are we realizing that maybe we can't adapt to some of the lessons learned? And so we're trying to look at new lessons that we might be able to win or might be able to make progress on? Or is this a... How many lessons do we have to learn before we actually make progress is, I guess, my answer or question. Speaker 3 (5:19) Yeah, so I've spent the last six months waiting for the EMSO debate to spring up about how do we, you know, right now I think what we're doing is we've engaged Iran for six months. We've hit a number of targets that hasn't really translated into power to control. like we thought it would or we hoped it would. We have obviously used up certain stores of weapons, especially certain kinds of weapons. And now we're about to reinvest in those same weapons and kind of follow maybe a very similar strategy, very kinetic focused strategy. And maybe that will sort of be what breaks the camel's back. Who knows? But I look at that and I think, I don't know how the outcome is different. unless the state in Iran is much more fragile politically. But I think we need to look at an EMSO strategy. I don't think we have one. And that's been frustrating to not hear that. Speaker 2 (6:20) What kind of concerns me is when we talk about Russia and Ukraine, it's obvious, like I said, it's a spectrum fight. And everything we talk about in terms of lessons, in terms of what we need to achieve for... A military advantage, whether it's a coalition advantage, a NATO advantage, Ukrainian advantage, all starts and ends with EW. And the number one kind of outcome of this conversation is we have to change the way that we buy systems. We have to scale differently. We have to leverage commercial. All these massive muscle movements that have to happen in a very antiquated acquisition system that we have. Iran comes around and now it's like, well, our lesson is we just need to produce more conventional kinetic weapons. It's almost like, let's look for a lesson that we know that we can quote unquote learn from and just keep doing the same thing. We haven't actually accomplished what we need to coming out of Russia and Ukraine. And I feel like we're turning attention to Iran and we're making, we're using that as almost trying, are we? ignoring one set of lessons because another set of lessons is easier. Speaker 3 (7:31) I think, yeah, I think the last six months has been, to me at least, a lesson in sort of bureaucratic inertia that it's very hard to, and part of it I think is the actual where the pain is inside the DOD or the DOW bureaucracy. And that is that the air defense people are probably the most kinetic culture there is. It's very hard for them, for the air defense community. to, and I'm talking like writ large, to not embrace what they know, right? What they're schooled in, all of that. And they haven't experienced failure yet, right? They've just experienced, unless you define failure as not achieving your goals, they haven't failed catastrophically where they can't defend targets, but they're defending targets at great expense, right? Defending bases at tremendous expense. And Iran really hasn't taken the gloves off and going after, say, infrastructure like desalinization plants and other things that are really critical in the Middle East. So they haven't caused enough pain to ratchet up. But that threat is still there. And that's where things sit right now.