Drone Deterrence
The Iran war is the first large scale demonstration of drone deterrence. Here's how drone deterrence works and what it means.
Recently, we experienced a classic tit for tat exchange between the US/Israel/Gulf States and Iran.
March 18, 2026. Surprising its allies, Israel bombed the processing facilities of Iran’s South Pars gas field. It was the first upstream energy strike of the war. A clear escalation of the conflict.
March 19, 2026. Iran matched this escalation with a hit on Ras Laffan in Qatar, the world’s largest LNG export complex, and numerous gas/oil facilities in UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait (Qatar announced that the attack reduced its export capacity by 17% for the next three to five years).
The US and the Gulf states responded by publicly threatening Iran with escalation, while aggressively pressuring Israel in private to halt all future attacks on upstream energy facilities.
This exchange established an escalation boundary for the conflict.
Iran and the Gulf States can’t accept the destruction of their energy assets and the US can’t accept the damage to the global economy/inflation (as well as its alliances with the Gulf States) that this destruction would cause.
In short, Iran deterred any future escalation of the conflict that damaged upstream energy assets.
Looking at the conflict as a whole, it should be clear that if the US and the Gulf States had known that Iran would shut the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the US decapitation attack (nobody believed it was possible with US conventional superiority and previous experience, at least at the political level), its likely the attack would have been deterred.
This is new, because Iran didn’t achieve deterrence due to a superior military (conventional air force, army, navy). Most of its conventional air and naval assets have been destroyed. It achieved it through drones and ballistic missiles.
Deterrence Theory
Classical deterrence theory (Thomas Schelling) focuses on how to use the threat of force to deter and enemy (to keep the status quo). Key concepts include;
Credibility. The adversary must believe you have the capability to do what you threaten.
Commitment and irreversible moves. Once deterrence fails, there’s no choice. The threatened action will occur.
Chance. If you test the limits of deterrence, the threat may be triggered by a random factor (error, miscalculation, loss of control, etc.).
Manipulation of risk. Both sides routinely demonstrate resolve (limited strikes, etc.) to show that the threat is real.
Reassurance. There must be negative assurances (signals that if the enemy refrains from escalatory actions, no harm will come).
In a conventional conflict, deterrence is very difficult to achieve unless the side threatening action has overwhelming military superiority and nearly impossible if far weaker. So, how did Iran pull this off?
Brave New War
The answer is drones (air, land, sea, undersea, space) and systems disruption. Let’s dive in. Years ago, I wrote a book (Brave New War) that posited that;
Rapidly advancing, relatively inexpensive, and globally available technology will offer small groups (terrorists -> small states) extreme leverage in warfare (do far more with much less).
To maximize the leverage the damage done by this new technology these groups will focus on disrupting networked systems, systems that the world has become utterly dependent upon — this focus amplifies the damage done to maximize the return on investment (ROI achieved based on the cost of the attack).
Furthermore, if these groups radically decentralize their command and control (either purposely or through the use of open source organizational forms), which due to the nature of the technology and the targets (systems), they can radically improve their survivability.
Here’s how this theory applies to the war with Iran.
