Just after midnight on June 13, 2025, an Israeli operation codenamed Rising Lion unfolded in two distinct but mutually reinforcing acts. First came swarms of small explosive drones that Israeli commandos had reportedly pre-positioned inside Iran months earlier, striking air-defense radars and communications nodes, while decoying attention toward Tehran’s western approaches. Minutes later, over 200 Israeli fighter aircraft—many of them F-35 Adirs carrying standoff munitions—conducted precision strikes against more than 100 nuclear and military targets across Iran, including senior military leaders. 

The result was operational dislocation: Iranian early-warning networks were saturated by low-observable drones, senior commanders were killed or forced into hardened shelters, and decisionmaking channels fractured just as long-range penetrating fires arrived. This shock-and-awe approach by Israel explains the limited initial Iranian response, firing only 100 drones compared to the mixture of over 200 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles fired during Operation True Promise in April 2024.

The attack illustrates how combinations of conventional long-range strikes and unconventional operations have a unique role in modern war, reminiscent of the dawn of modern special operations and the “ungentlemanly warriors” of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Advantage in battle, when each side can see the other side using even commercial satellite images, goes to the side more able to generate asymmetries that produce shock and dislocation. That effect requires more than a standoff precision strike: It requires the ability to pair airpower with special operations to generate effects across the depth of the battlespace simultaneously. As a result, Operational Rising Lion is a blueprint for future joint campaigns and suggests key investments the U.S. military will need to make to adapt to the changing character of war. These include accelerating efforts to integrate special forces with low-cost drones—similar to the foundational work with Project Replicator—with long-range precision strike campaigns, alongside rethinking defense in depth to protect critical assets.