The technology requirements of US Middle East policy

Fast advancements in Iranian missile precision, range, speed, and lethality will haunt CENTCOM for the foreseeable future

Ewan White

Washington must seriously reform its notoriously slow and complex foreign military sales process to help regional partners meet the rising strategic challenge of Iran

The technology requirements of US Middle East policy

Bilal Saab

last update on 24 Mar 2024

Greater policy coherence, political willingness, and multilateral cooperation can help manage (and even solve) most of the United States's security problems in the Middle East.

Yet as critical as those intangibles are—which lately have been lacking in a rapidly evolving global and regional security environment—one cannot underestimate the very important role technology plays and will continue to play in helping to deter and counter a myriad of threats to US and collective security interests.

In the Middle East, the three main categories of threats on which US Central Command (CENTCOM)’s three main lines of effort are based are:

1. Direct and indirect Iranian aggression against US interests, forces, and partners

2. Violent extremist organisations

3. Chinese and Russian influence

As significant as the second and third threats are, the bulk of CENTCOM’s threat portfolio will continue to centre on Iran and its proxies for years to come (assuming the Iranian regime does not collapse or Washington does not topple it). More than ever, US technology will be indispensable to tackle that multifaceted threat.

Iranian advancements

Fast advancements in Iranian missile precision, range, speed, and lethality will haunt CENTCOM for the foreseeable future and complicate its activities in the Middle East. In the past, CENTCOM merely had to worry about the size of Iran’s missile arsenal—the largest in the region.

Today, it also must worry about the fact that Tehran can hit any target in the region—accurately, rapidly, and lethally—including in Israel.

AFP — Different kinds of long-range Iranian missiles and rocket carriers are displayed around Tehran's defence exhibition on 24 February 2023.

Whereas in the past, Iran’s missiles were considered weapons of terror, serving primarily deterrence purposes, currently, they are also used for offensive warfighting purposes, as evidenced by the series of Iranian attacks against a range of US and partner targets in the region.

Iran will continue to invest in precision-guided weapons because accuracy is cost-effective, increases lethality, reduces collateral damage (to avoid escalation), and decreases mission and logistics costs. It is also compatible with Iran’s existing munitions and weapons systems. It requires minimal human training. And it is readily available.

Iran’s ability to deploy precision-guided systems will continue to improve and become increasingly autonomous. With time, operating these systems from longer ranges will become easier for Iran, and the use of a predetermined Global Positioning System (or other Global Navigation Satellite) or Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms could reduce the role of Iranian personnel in the decision-making process.

When Iran launched several attacks weeks ago against targets in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, it showed off some of these capabilities and flexed its muscles to its adversaries. In its recent strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets in Syria, Iran is believed to have used one of its longer-range and more advanced missiles, the Kheiber Shekan.

Unveiled in 2022, the Kheiber Shekan is a solid-propellant precision-guided missile that reportedly has a range of roughly 900 miles.

But what makes it stand out from the rest of Iran’s arsenal is that its warhead can nimbly manoeuvre with tiny aerodynamic fins to evade at least some of the less sophisticated missile defence systems.

Iran also has the Fattah precision-guided missile, which allegedly is hypersonic and has a range of also roughly 900 miles.

Fast advancements in Iranian missile precision, range, speed, and lethality will haunt CENTCOM for the foreseeable future.

Hypersonic missiles can fly at least five times faster than the speed of sound and on a complex trajectory, which makes them difficult to intercept. Without effective US countermeasures supported by state-of-the-art missile defence technology, US deterrence against Iran will struggle significantly.

Iran will also continue to invest in unmanned systems. The next generation of precision-guided munitions, which is not out of reach for Tehran, will be carried and operated by both conventional and manned platforms and autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is proud of Iran's UAS capabilities, including the Shahed-129, which they described as a technological breakthrough due to its advanced combat and reconnaissance missions.

Iran is also developing its AI military capabilities. The IRGC claims it has successfully integrated AI into its large drone fleet. Iranian tactics are likely to evolve from the pinpoint use of drones to the use of drone swarms.

Simultaneously, Iran has increased drone range by switching from line-of-sight to GPS navigation. Given its technological advances and the global proliferation of AI applications, it is only a matter of time before Iranian aspirations about AI-infused drones become fully realised. When this happens, the operational environment in the region will change in some ways in Iran's favour.

AFP — This handout picture provided by the Iranian Army office on August 24, 2022, shows suicide (kamikaze) drones during a two-day drone drill at an undisclosed location in Iran.

Leveraging American innovation

None of this suggests that the United States lacks technological solutions to these evolving security problems. The United States excels at innovation, and the US Navy has been effectively leveraging innovation in regional waters to ensure maritime security.

But CENTCOM and other geographic combatant commands do not invest in research, development, testing, evaluation, and procurement themselves. They are not funded to pursue those activities.

The system is built so that the geographic combatant commands advocate to the US military services, who are tasked with training and equipping, what capabilities they need, and in theory, those services invest in those capabilities. However, that system is not always conducive to moving at the desired speed.

The future of warfare

Even though Russia's war in Ukraine has demonstrated that mass and capacity still matter, the future of warfare in the Middle East is likely to focus less on firepower and more on the power of information and the way it connects a military's forces through the concepts of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR).

Now more than ever, whoever can collect the most vital information, accurately and rapidly analyse it, and securely disseminate it will own the advantage.

America's unmatched global surveillance capabilities give it a huge advantage over Iran. But Iran's ability to hide and conceal, which makes it harder for the United States to process and analyse information in real-time, gives it an edge.

The US defence bureaucracy is not ready for this evolving threat spectrum, be it in the region or elsewhere. The adversary—in this case Iran and its state and non-state allies—can develop, procure, deploy, and employ new capabilities more nimbly than the United States.

The onus is on Washington to seriously reform its notoriously slow and complex foreign military sales process to help the US defence industry and regional partners develop and co-develop joint capabilities to meet Iran's rising strategic challenge.

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