warfare

Despite United States President Donald Trump’s repeated declarations of victory in the US-Israeli war on Iran, Tehran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and US military assets in the region have continued, upending global financial and energy markets.

“We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west. We’ve incorporated lessons accordingly,” Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X on March 1, the day after US and Israeli strikes on Tehran killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

“Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war,” he wrote.

According to analysts, Iran has made use of “asymmetric” warfare tactics while striking the US and Israel. So, are Tehran’s war tactics working?

Here’s what we know:

What is ‘asymmetric’ warfare?

When the balance of capabilities is unequal in a conflict – as it is in relation to weapons in this one – the weaker party can turn to unconventional methods of warfare, John Phillips, a British safety, security and risk adviser and a former military chief instructor, told Al Jazeera.

This is known as “asymmetric” warfare.

This can include the use of guerrilla tactics, terrorism, cyberattacks, use of proxies and other indirect tools, Phillips said, in order “to offset conventional inferiority, avoid the enemy’s strengths, and exploit vulnerabilities in political will, logistics, and legal or ethical constraints”.

“Iran is conventionally weaker than the US and Israel, but relatively strong compared to many neighbours,” he said.

“What makes Iran distinctive is not that it uses these methods at all, but that they sit at the centre of its grand strategy rather than at its margins.”

Why is Iran using asymmetric warfare?

In the ongoing war between Iran and the US-Israel, Washington and Tel Aviv have been using expensive missiles and drones to attack Iran and to intercept missiles Iran has fired back. The Patriot and THAAD defence systems, for example, which launch interceptors to take out incoming drones and missiles, can cost millions of dollars for each missile they fire. This compares with the $20,000-$35,000 cost of each Iranian Shahed drone.

As a result, the US has reportedly spent $2bn a day in its war on Iran and there are fears it could run out of interceptor missiles altogether if the war goes on for more than a few weeks.

It is therefore in Iran’s interests to focus on holding out against strikes and protecting its own weapons supplies while it does so, military experts say.

However, Phillips explained that precision strikes and sabotage by Israel and the US have demonstrated that Iran is not able to fully shield its missile, drone and nuclear‑related assets, while sanctions and domestic pressures have limited its capacity to sustain a very high‑tempo confrontation.

“As a result, Iran’s asymmetric approach is best understood as an effective ‘survival and leverage’ mechanism that produces a chronic, costly ‘shadow war’, rather than a path to decisive regional hegemony or victory,” he said.

Iran began using asymmetric warfare techniques following the 1979 Iranian revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

“Instead of trying to match high‑end aircraft, precision munitions, or blue‑water fleets, [Iran] has built a ‘forward deterrence’ posture that operates in the grey zone between war and peace,” Phillips said.

“This is backed by large inventories of ballistic and cruise missiles, mass‑produced drones [often handed to proxies], cyber-operations, and a posture of underground, dispersed and hardened facilities that make preemption difficult and preserve some retaliatory capability.”

What asymmetric tactics has Iran been using?

Enemy depletion tactics

Since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, Tehran has launched a wave of ballistic missiles targeting Israel and US military bases across the Gulf region.

Using a mix of short and medium-range ballistic missiles, as well as drone swarms through this defence system, Iran aims to deplete Israeli and US interceptor stockpiles.

Economic warfare

Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies are shipped. Linking the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, the strait is the only waterway to the open ocean available to Gulf oil producers.

On Thursday, Iran attacked fuel tankers in Iraqi waters. Instability in and around the Strait of Hormuz drove Brent crude oil prices past $100 a barrel last week, with wild swings ongoing, prompting fears of a global energy crisis.

Iran has also targeted civilian infrastructure like airports and desalination plants which are crucial for water supply in the region, and it has launched drones targeting oil depots.

War on global finance

Meanwhile, on Wednesday this week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened to attack “economic centres and banks” with links to United States and Israeli entities in the Gulf region after what it claimed was an attack on an Iranian bank, with the war in its 12th day.

Since then, many banks like Citibank and HSBC in Qatar, have begun shutting, further threatening global financial stability.

Top technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle, as well as the listed offices and infrastructure for cloud-based services, are also located in several Israeli cities and in some Gulf countries, which Iran has also threatened to attack.

Use of proxies

Iran has aimed to keep the much more powerful US military and its allies off balance through proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Hezbollah in Lebanon, for example, has fired missiles and drones into northern Israel since March 2 as part of Iran’s retaliatory strikes.

“At the core of this [asymmetric] approach is a network of proxies and partners – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq, groups in Syria, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen – which receive weapons, training, funding and ideological guidance from Iran,” Phillips said.

These actors allow Tehran to threaten Israeli and US forces, as well as regional shipping lanes, on multiple fronts, “often with a degree of deniability and at a fraction of the cost of deploying its own regular forces”, Phillips noted.

‘Mosaic’ defence system

Iran has organised its defensive structure into multiple regional and semi-independent layers instead of concentrating power in a single command chain that could be paralysed by a decapitation strike. This concept is most closely associated with the formation of the parallel military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), particularly under former commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, who led the force from 2007 to 2019.

The doctrine has two central aims: to make Iran’s command system difficult to dismantle by force, and to make the battlefield itself harder to resolve quickly by turning Iran into a layered arena of regular defence, irregular warfare, local mobilisation and long-term attrition.

What damage have these tactics done to the US and Israel?

Iran’s asymmetrical playbook has made the war more expensive for the US. It has been forced to spend money on replacing stockpiles of expensive missiles like Tomahawks and defensive systems such as Patriot and THAAD interceptors.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the first 100 hours alone of Operation Epic Fury – the codename for the US-Israeli assault on Iran – cost the US approximately $3.7bn, mostly unbudgeted. Israel, already reeling from the economic strain of its prolonged wars in Gaza and Lebanon, faces mounting domestic pressure as daily sirens force millions into bunkers.

While the Pentagon has not yet announced an official estimate for the cost of the war, late last week, two congressional sources told US broadcaster MS NOW that the war is costing the United States an estimated $1bn a day.

A day later, Politico reported that US Republicans on Capitol Hill privately fear the Pentagon is spending close to $2bn a day on the war.

Meanwhile, officials from President Donald Trump’s administration estimated during a congressional briefing this week that the first six days of the war on Iran had cost the US at least $11.3bn, a source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency.

Reporting from Washington, DC, following the publication of the CSIS analysis last week, Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan said the Pentagon had put together a $50bn supplemental budget request in order to replace Tomahawk and Patriot missiles and THAAD interceptors already used in the first week of the war, along with other equipment that had been damaged or worn out so far.

Are Iran’s tactics working?

To a certain extent, they are.

According to a report by The Soufan Center, the “pattern of Iranian counterattacks suggests a layered operational approach designed to generate pressure on Gulf states, create regional disruption on land, sea, and air, while simultaneously attempting to exhaust US and allied defensive resources”.

“Tehran appears to be fighting a war of endurance: prolong the conflict, expand the economic battlefield, make the costs increasingly prohibitive, ration advanced capabilities, and impose steady human and financial costs on its adversaries. All with the hope that political tolerance erodes faster in Jerusalem and Washington than in Tehran,” the report noted.

This may be working. Questions about the cost of the war are already causing a political headache for the Trump administration in Washington.

Congress’s House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference last week that President Donald Trump is “plunging America into another endless conflict in the Middle East” and “spending billions of dollars to bomb Iran”.

“But they can’t find a dime to make it more affordable for the American people to go see a doctor when they need one,” he said. “Can’t find a dime to make it easier for Americans who are working hard to purchase their first home. And they can’t find a dime to lower the grocery bills of the American people.”

Trump won the presidency in 2024 largely on the back of a promise to handle the rising cost of living and he faces mid-term elections this year. It is likely that the cost of the war will not play well with voters, analysts say.

In Israel, opposition politician Yair Golan has also criticised his government’s economic management of the war.

In a post on X on Sunday, he wrote: “The war with Iran has been planned for months. The fact that the Israeli government has not prepared an orderly economic plan to support citizens during the war period is a disgrace.

“The serving and working public should not be the one footing the bill for the war out of its own pocket while billions of shekels go to the evading and non-working sector,” he said, adding that the opposition will soon replace the government.

Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that at a fraction of the cost – and despite a significant technological gap – Iran has demonstrated an ability to hold the global economy at risk, to pressure Washington into “blinking first”.

“A steady stream of inexpensive drones and limited missile strikes can disrupt the thriving economies of Israel and the Gulf, sending shockwaves through energy markets and ultimately translating into higher prices at American gas stations,” he said.

Phillips, the British safety, security and risk adviser, said the strategy has worked in important but limited ways.

“It has helped the Islamic republic survive intense sanctions, clandestine campaigns and periodic strikes while maintaining a credible ability to hit US bases, Israeli territory and Gulf infrastructure, which in turn raises the political and military cost of any attempt at regime-change war,” he said.

“Iran’s reach – stretching from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen – allows it to shape crises, quickly raise the stakes of local conflicts, and force adversaries to devote substantial resources to missile defence, counter‑UAV systems, naval protection and regional coalition management,” he noted.

“However, there are clear constraints and growing problems. Key proxies such as Hezbollah and various militias have suffered leadership and infrastructure losses; the network has become more fragmented and sometimes less controllable, increasing the risk of unwanted escalation even as its coherence as an instrument of policy erodes,” he added.

The loss of three U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles to apparent friendly fire over Kuwait earlier today underscores an enduring reality of conflict: despite advances in technology, high levels of training, and the most carefully prepared plans, casualties inflicted by the same side are always a hazard. Indeed, these are not the first blue-on-blue incidents involving U.S. and allied combat aircraft in the various campaigns since the end of the Cold War. Two of those, in particular, both dating from the invasion of Iraq in 2003, appear eerily similar to the incident over Kuwait today.

While we are still awaiting detailed information as to what happened over Kuwait today, U.S. Central Command has confirmed that the six crew members involved are all safe. You can meanwhile get up to date with what we know about the incident in our report here.

In light of that, we now look back at the previous, high-profile friendly-fire incidents in which the U.S. military has been involved in recent decades.

U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawks, 1994

In terms of overall loss of life, the costliest fratricide incident involving U.S. military aircraft since the end of the Cold War was the April 14, 1994, shootdown by U.S. Air Force F-15 Eagle fighters of two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters over Iraq, in which 26 individuals died.

On that date, the two Black Hawks and their crews were assigned to Operation Provide Comfort, a multinational relief effort to aid Kurdish refugees in southern Turkey following the 1991 Gulf War. The helicopters were transporting U.S., British, French, and Turkish military officers; Kurdish representatives; and a U.S. political advisor in northern Iraq. Operating over Turkey was a U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) aircraft, to offer airborne threat warning and control for the Provide Comfort aircraft, including the Black Hawks. Despite this, the pilots of two U.S. Air Force F-15 fighters patrolling the area misidentified the Black Hawks as Iraqi Mi-25 Hind helicopters (export versions of the Mi-24) and shot them down.

A subsequent investigation into the incident revealed that, despite the AWACS crew being aware that the Black Hawks were in the area, the two F-15 pilots were not. The Eagle pilots received two radar contacts (indicating helicopters) and stated that they attempted unsuccessfully to identify them by electronic means. They twice reported their unsuccessful attempts to the AWACS, but were still not informed of the presence of the friendly Black Hawks. The F-15 pilots attempted a visual identification, making a single pass each of the helicopters, but this was later deemed insufficient for a positive ID. Instead, the lead pilot misidentified the helicopters as hostile Hinds. The pilot’s confusion was compounded by the fact that the UH-60s were carrying fuel tanks on their external pylons, making them look more like Hinds, with their characteristic stub-wing weapons stations.

The F-15C flight lead fired a single missile and shot down the trailing Black Hawk helicopter. At the lead pilot’s direction, the F-15 wingman also fired a single missile and shot down the lead helicopter. All 26 individuals aboard the two Black Hawks were killed.

After the investigation, which described a catalog of failures, both human and technical, the two F-15 pilots were disqualified from aviation service for three years. Similar punishments were faced by three members of the AWACS crew.

U.K. Royal Air Force Tornado GR4A, 2003

The pilot and navigator of this Tornado reconnaissance jet were both killed when they were targeted by a U.S. Army Patriot air defense missile during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Flying as part of a package of Coalition aircraft, the Tornado was returning to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait on March 22, 2003, when the Patriot battery wrongly identified it as an Iraqi anti-radiation missile. The suspected hostile track was interrogated by the identification friend or foe (IFF) system, but there was no response. The Patriot crew launched the missile, and the Tornado began self-defense actions.

Both Tornado crew members were killed instantly when the missile hit their aircraft.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense’s investigation into the incident concluded that a number of issues had contributed. Some of these related to the Patriot system and included the threat classification criteria, rules of engagement, firing doctrine, crew training, IFF procedures, and the nature of autonomous battery operation. The Tornado’s IFF serviceability was a contributing factor, and investigators also found issues with aircraft routing and airspace control measures, as well as overall orders and instructions.

U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet, 2003

The F/A-18C flown by Lt. Nathan Dennis White of Strike Fighter Squadron 195 was another victim of a Patriot missile during the war in Iraq in 2003.

According to U.S. Central Command, on April 2, 2003, Lt. White was flying one of two Navy F/A-18s near Karbala in central Iraq, which were heading back to their aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk. As in the Tornado incident the previous month, a Patriot missile battery mistakenly identified the Hornet as an Iraqi missile. The notification was passed on to the Information Coordination Center, responsible for coordinating air defense. The center mistakenly designated the flight path of the Navy jet as a missile track.

Seconds later, a second Patriot battery located closer to the front line also detected the F/A-18C and also mistook it for an Iraqi missile. The second battery concluded that it was being targeted by the missile. The air defense batteries were reportedly both assigned to defend the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, which was driving north near Karbala and about 50 miles from the Iraqi capital.

Since the erroneous reports aligned, the operators at the two Patriot batteries and at the command center became “increasingly confident that they were all detecting the same hostile missile, that their detection was accurate, and that this missile was a direct threat to U.S. forces,” according to a summary of the report into the incident.

The command center ordered that two Patriot missiles be launched, shooting down the F/A-18C and killing Lt. White.

The personnel involved did not face punishment. “It was determined … that no disciplinary action was warranted,” said Marine Capt. Kelly Frushour, a spokeswoman for Central Command.

U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet, 2024

Most recently, a U.S. Navy F/A-18F belonging to Strike Fighter Squadron 11 was involved in a friendly-fire incident with a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class cruiser in the Red Sea on December 22, 2024.

As we detailed in our previous coverage of the incident, the F/A-18F was returning to the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, after conducting a refueling mission. The Carrier Strike Group had been busy fending off a sustained Houthi drone and missile attack in the run-up to the incident. Indeed, a series of errors and misjudgements meant that the Super Hornet had been identified by the warship as a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile, like others fired at the strike group.

“After successfully returning from its initial mission, an F/A-18F launched again to provide air defense support from OWAs and ASCMs [one-way attack drones and anti-ship cruise missiles] that were inbound to the force,” a U.S. official told TWZ at the time. “They were shot down while recovery of remaining aircraft was underway.”

The F/A-18F was downed by a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) from the cruiser USS Gettysburg. Both crew members ejected from their jet and were recovered. Initial reports indicated that one of the crew members had minor injuries.

A myriad of issues, some systemic, contributed to the shootdown and the near miss, as we discussed once the report into the incident was published. How all these factors combined to cause the friendly-fire incident is something we previously examined in a study about the stresses the Red Sea deployments were putting on Navy surface combatants’ Combat Information Center (CIC), the nerve center and tactical brain of those vessels.

During the same operation in the Red Sea, Gettysburg also almost shot down another Super Hornet, too.

What all these incidents have in common is the fact that the complexities of aerial warfare make this an unpredictable and hazardous business, especially when split-second decisions have to be made. The proliferation of varied threats, as well as the fact that U.S. forces may have to fight alongside allies using different weapons, doctrines, and operating procedures, only adds to the challenge.

In all of these cases, the incidents occurred in high-threat environments with multiple layers of hazards, some of which can be very hard to detect and categorize, and which increasingly arrive simultaneously. As well as more traditional threats, like cruise and ballistic missiles, and aircraft, these increasingly include (and are enhanced by) electronic warfare and other emerging threats.

It is a sometimes-cruel irony that, while U.S. and allied forces are optimized to suppress and destroy hostile threats, this sometimes makes the positive identification of non-threat assets harder. Moreover, while technology, such as enhanced IFF and datalink systems, aims to decrease the chances of a blue-on-blue incident, these systems don’t always work as advertised, especially in a coalition environment.

Even the close-to-reality nature of combat exercises provides a risk of friendly fire. A case in point that we have looked at in the past involved the shootdown of a U.S. Navy A-6E Intruder on June 4, 1996, during the Rim of the Pacific maneuvers, or RIMPAC. The strike jet was flying off the Forrestal class aircraft carrier USS Independence when it was accidentally shot down by a Mark 15 Phalanx close-in weapons system, or CIWS, aboard the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) Asagiri class destroyer Yugiri.

A much more confused situation exists over the battlefields in the Ukraine war. Here, a much more diverse collection of air defense assets is at work, of both Soviet and Western origin. An even greater potential for blue-on-blue exists since many of the same (or very similar) air defense systems and combat aircraft are facing off against each other. Aircraft missions are also regularly flown much closer to the ground, and in proximity to ground forces, meaning the reaction times are even more limited. Both Russia and Ukraine have experienced friendly-fire incidents, bringing down fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and drones. In one of the most prominent such incidents, it was claimed that one of the first F-16s delivered to Ukraine was shot down by a Patriot missile due to a lack of coordination between the units.

A group of Block 52 F-16CJ Vipers belonging to the South Carolina Air National Guard was recently spotted heading east across the Atlantic as part of a huge build-up of U.S. forces ahead of potential strikes on Iran. Each of the Vipers was notably seen carrying an Angry Kitten pod, a new electronic warfare system that helps defend against anti-air threats, and that may now be headed for its first use in real combat. Angry Kitten also has a very unique genesis, which we will dive into in a moment. These particular F-16s are primarily tasked with the Wild Weasel mission and are optimized for neutralizing enemy air defenses, something that would be crucial in any future operation aimed at the regime in Tehran. They can fulfill many other types of missions, as well.

The 12 F-16CJs arrived at Lajes on the island of Terceira in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the mid-Atlantic, on February 17 and left the next day. The Vipers are readily identifiable as ones assigned to the South Carolina Air National Guard’s 169th Fighter Wing by the “South Carolina” emblazoned on many of their tails, as well as distinctive markings reflecting the wing’s nickname, the “Swamp Foxes.” They were accompanied by at least one KC-46A Pegasus tanker. A substantial U.S. Air Force tanker force is now also forward-deployed in Lajes to support the ongoing build-up.

Roar of the F-16s Over the Atlantic | KC-46A Opens the Afternoon ✈️🇺🇸

Military Stopover in the Azores | F-16 & KC-46A ✈️🇺🇸 at Lajes

The F-16s transiting through Lajes carried inert AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) on their wingtips and drop tanks under each wing, as well as a single baggage pod. Each Viper also had a LITENING targeting pod and an AN/ASQ-213 HARM Targeting System pod. The AN/ASQ-213 is a key feature of Wild Weasel F-16s and is primarily designed to support the employment of members of the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) family. AGM-88-series missiles are chief among the munitions U.S. aircraft typically use during suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD) missions.

However, the most notable stores seen on the jets were the Angry Kitten pods hanging underneath their fuselages. U.S. Air Force F-16s, and especially Wild Weasel CJs, typically carry other types of electronic warfare pods, such as the AN/ALQ-184 and AN/ALQ-131, on that station.

Angry Kitten has a very different story from other electronic warfare pods in U.S. military service. It is a direct outgrowth of the AN/ALQ-167, a series of pods primarily used to mimic hostile electronic warfare threats for training and testing purposes for decades. There are some documented examples of U.S. aircraft carrying AN/ALQ-167s, at least on an ad hoc basis, on real combat missions.

The development of Angry Kitten, which dates back to the early 2010s, was originally focused on providing improved electronic warfare capabilities for testing and training use, especially by aggressors playing the role of ‘red air’ adversaries. However, the potential value of the new pods as operational assets to help protect friendly aircraft quickly became apparent. The ability to rapidly adapt the pods in training to provide different effects simulating enemy systems, in particular, opened the door to a much more agile electronic system for use on real-world missions.

“We had a jammer called ‘Angry Kitten.’ It was built to be an adversary air jamming tool,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, then commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), told TWZ and other outlets back in 2022. “And all of a sudden, the blue team said, ‘you know, hey, we kind of need that, can we have that for us?’ And so I see this iterating and testing our way into this.”

Angry Kitten has been flying on F-16s since 2017. The pods have also been at least test flown on U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthog ground attack jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones, and HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue (CSAR) aircraft, as well as U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighters. AATC said last year that there were plans to evaluate the pod on KC-135 and KC-46 aerial refueling tankers.

As TWZ has previously written:

“Unlike the older AN/ALQ-167s, Angry Kitten is designed to be more readily modifiable and updatable to more rapidly adapt in parallel with the threat ecosystem. This is enabled in part by advanced Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology, which allows radio frequency (RF) signals to be detected and ‘captured,’ as well as manipulated and retransmitted. Electronic warfare systems that use DRFM can project signals from hostile radars (and radar seekers on missiles) back at them to create false or otherwise confusing tracks. Data collected via DRFM can also be used to help improve and refine the system’s capabilities, as well as for other intelligence exploitation purposes.”

“In general, electronic warfare systems need to be able to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to waveforms based on information contained in their built-in threat libraries to work most effectively. This, in turn, requires specialists to routinely reprogram systems to keep them as up to date as possible. Automating and otherwise shortening that process at every step of the way by developing what are known as cognitive electronic warfare capabilities has become a major area of interest for the entire U.S. military. The absolute ‘holy grail’ of that concept is an electronic warfare system capable of adapting its programming autonomously in real-time, even in the middle of a mission, as you can read more about here.”

Details the Air Force has previously shared about Angry Kitten have highlighted how the system important stepping stone for new cognitive electronic warfare capabilities.

“Unlike the F-16 tests, where pre-programmed mission data files were used, the C-130 testing includes development engineers aboard the aircraft who can modify jamming techniques mid-mission based on feedback from range control,” a release last March from the Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center (AATC), which has been heavily involved in Angry Kitten’s development, explained.

“They are making changes [in] real-time to the techniques and pushing updates to the pod, seeing the change in real-time,” Chris Culver, an electronic warfare engineer involved in the work, said in that same release. “This approach allows for rapid optimization of jamming techniques against various threat systems.”

For F-16s supporting future operations in and around Iran, Angry Kitten would offer a valuable boost in self-defense capability for the fourth-generation jets. Stealthy B-2 Spirit bombers, as well as F-22 and F-35 fighters, spearheaded the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran last year, with non-stealthy platforms providing support on the periphery. A new protracted campaign would involve more substantial effort to break Iran’s air defense overlay, which would likely require heavier use of fourth-generation tactical jets. The SEAD/DEAD missions that the South Carolina Air National Guard jets are optimized for inherently involve added risk since the aircraft are deliberately tasked with finding anti-air threats and engaging them.

Past TWZ analysis of air defense capabilities that Iran has supplied Houthi militants in Yemen offers some sense of the risks involved, even to stealth aircraft. However, Iran’s own capabilities are more advanced. At the same time, Israeli strikes took a significant toll on Iranian air defense systems during last year’s 12 Day War, especially in the western end of the country. It’s unclear to what degree that capacity has been restored in the interim.

Angry Kitten is, of course, just one part of the massive array of electronic warfare and other capabilities that the U.S. military has deployed in and around the Middle East in recent weeks.

It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump’s administration will launch a new operation, which could last weeks, against Iran. There continues a steady drumbeat of reports pointing to the increasing likelihood of strikes as U.S. military assets continue to flow into the region, but also stressing that no final decision has been made. Trump and other administration officials are at least still publicly pushing for a diplomatic resolution to the current crisis, focused primarily on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“They better negotiate a fair deal,” Trump said today when asked if he had a message for the Iranian people.

Reporter: Do you have any message to the Iranian people?

Trump: The Iranian people in Iran or people here?

Reporter: In Iran

Trump: They better negotiate a fair deal. You know, the people of Iran are a lot different than the leaders of Iran. And it’s very, very very sad… pic.twitter.com/0a7i5LtGf2

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 20, 2026

“The most I can say – I am considering it,” Trump had also said earlier today when asked if he was considering strikes on Iran.

If the Trump administration does decide to move ahead with a new Iran operation, Wild Weasel F-16s from the South Carolina Air National Guard carrying Angry Kitten pods are among the capabilities that could be brought to bear.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com