DONETSK OBLAST, UKRAINE – SEPTEMBER 3: Ukrainian soldiers train with armed ground robots at an undisclosed location in the Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 3 September 2025. (Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Anadolu via Getty Images
A new battlefield dynamic is quietly taking shape in the increasingly devastating conflicts in Iran and Ukraine. Asymmetric warfare, long a staple in the arsenal of guerilla units and insurgents battling much larger military forces, has become a key part of the Iranian and Ukrainian militaries warfighting approach. It’s now likely, in my view, given the outsized effects of these new tools and strategies that they will be a core part of international conflicts for the foreseeable future.
The Iran War
In a little less than two months, the combined US-Israeli military campaign against Iran has been effective in crippling the country’s military and undermining its ability to mount a conventional defense. The US-Israeli offensive has at this point launched more than 17,000 airstrikes on Iran, hitting key ballistic and drone manufacturing facilities, sinking most of the Iranian navy, disrupting the regime’s ability to exercise command-and-control of far-flung units, and devastating key parts of Iran’s defense industrial base.
Yet none of this has prevented Iran from launching an effective asymmetric response, incorporating non-traditional weapons and tactics to stymie its adversaries. On the weapons front, Iran has used its vast arsenal of low-cost drones, with some pre-war estimates placing its drone fleet in the tens of thousands, to strike US and Israeli targets throughout the Middle East. Iran has also frequently fired a high number of drones—in the hundreds—to mask an accompanying lower volley of ballistic missiles—in the single digits at times—to confuse US, Israeli, and Gulf States’ air defense systems. This has frequently enabled their missiles to penetrate and inflict maximum damage.
Moreover, the great cost disparity between Iran’s Shahed drone ($25-50K) and the US missile interceptors frequently used to shoot them down (at a cost of nearly $4 million each) is making Tehran’s low-cost drone campaign a difficult threat to counter.
Meanwhile, Iran has made two asymmetric battlefield decisions that have altered the war’s trajectory. First, rather than only attacking the US and Israel at the onset of the conflict, Tehran immediately expanded the conflict to involve its Gulf State neighbors. This dramatically increased the stakes for the US, in particular, which enjoys solid relations with the Gulf states and has several key military bases scattered throughout the region, as well as deep economic ties.
Thus far, Iran has attacked all six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council with missile and drone strikes focused mostly on energy infrastructure and economic targets. In addition to piercing the Gulf’s reputation as a regional safe haven and hub for global energy, finance, and tourism, the attacks have heightened pressure on the White House to beef up its support to its Gulf allies and redirect US military assets to that purpose.
And perhaps most significantly, Iran has effectively closed commercial shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz—approximately 20-25 percent of the world’s total oil supply transits the strait annually—through a combination of asymmetric actions. This has included randomly attacking ships that have tried to navigate the strait in recent weeks using drones and missiles, as well as reportedly mining the strait by using the IRGC’s fast boats. The combination of these limited attacks and public threats to escalate has been sufficient to grind commercial shipping in the area to a halt and spur a global energy crisis.
Therefore, rather than going toe-to-toe with the vastly superior US and Israeli military coalition, Iran has chosen an alternative path and is demonstrating daily the growing relevance of asymmetric warfare.
The Ukraine War
While the Iran War has clearly demonstrated the newfound importance of asymmetric warfare on the modern battlefield, it follows closely in the footsteps of similar lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine. There, over the past four years, the much smaller Ukrainian military has used new weapons and tactics to halt the invading Russian military in its tracks and exact a disastrous human toll on the Russians. Since 2022, Russia has reportedly suffered approximately 1.2 million casualties with more than 300,000 killed.
From virtually a standing start in 2022, Ukraine quickly developed an impressive capability to mass produce (now 3-4 million a year) cheap, expendable drones capable of delivering precision munitions, gathering intelligence information, adjusting conventional artillery fire, and providing logistical support to the frontlines. This has helped thwart Russia’s ground offensive operations, so much so that Russia still controls only about 20 percent of Ukraine—an amount that has held steady for nearly two years.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s development and deployment of unmanned surface vehicles, coupled with Ukraine’s domestically built drones and missiles, have taken a heavy toll on the prestigious Russian Black Sea and largely driven it from its main base in Crimea to Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland. And Ukraine’s strategy of not only targeting Russian troops but firing missiles and drones at the energy sector that helps fund the Russian war machine, as well as the critical transportation nodes that enable it, has also put Moscow on its heels.
And finally, Ukraine’s creativity has even extended to the point that in the first three months of this year alone ground robotic systems have performed more than 22,000 missions on Ukraine’s front lines, in one high profile instance even capturing a Russian position and taking Russian POWs.
None of this, of course, is to say that Russia hasn’t also innovated and responded to Ukraine’s asymmetric weapons and tactics, but it’s clear that after four plus years of fighting Ukraine’s ability to shift from a conventional fight to one that leverages its unique technical expertise, creativity, and willingness to fight in unconventional ways has dramatically altered the war’s trajectory.
The Long-term Implications
So, if asymmetric warfare is now a growing feature of modern conflict what does this mean going forward? Here are a few thoughts:
- First, I would assume that other nations and non-state actors are also learning the battlefield lessons from the wars in Iran and Ukraine and will factor them into their own military planning going forward. It’s not hard to imagine, for example, that drones, robotics, and various AI-driven autonomous platforms will eventually play a major role in potential future conflicts in the South China Sea, along Russia’s border, and on the Korean Peninsula.
- Also, the growing importance of asymmetric weapons will undoubtedly shape the direction of global defense spending, with the Iran and Ukraine conflicts highlighting the devastating effect that low cost, expendable weapons can have on adversary forces. This might prompt major powers to reconsider some costly planned weapons purchases.
- And finally, the growing asymmetric nature of modern war and the proliferation of low tech, precision weapons means that the spillover of conflicts can escalate quickly, affecting countries and even sub-regions (such as the Gulf states) that were previously considered immune from attack.
These are a few implications and I’m confident that the confluence of rapidly evolving technology and battlefield necessity will produce many more in the coming months.
All opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.