In an era defined by simultaneous geopolitical crises, three conflicts are collectively reshaping the way nations develop, deploy, and adapt military technology. The simultaneity of the three has led to a transformation of the global defense tech landscape unmatched since the height of the Cold War.
The latest conflict to break out is Israel and the United States’ joint campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Operation Roaring Lion, aka Epic Fury. But for the past four years, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has redefined what modern warfare looks like, and the escalating hostilities between China and Taiwan are slowly but surely boiling over.
Each theater is distinct, yet all three are taking place at just the right time to accelerate the same underlying trend of software-defined, data-driven, and rapidly iterated warfare.
Precision intelligence
Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury, which was launched on February 28 and seems to now be winding down, represents the most significant US military action in the Middle East since the Iraq War of 2003.
The campaign in Iran began with a massive coordinated strike by US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the Israel Defense Forces against facilities in central Tehran and the country’s leadership, which included the killing of the regime’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and other political leaders.
The opening strike lasted one minute. The IDF then went on to attack Iran’s air defense array and ballistic missile arsenal. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the US Air Force achieved aerial superiority quickly over the country, allowing them to continue hitting targets.
The scale of the campaign was unprecedented. After five weeks of war, American forces alone struck well over 10,000 Iranian targets, while Israel is said to have dropped more than 13,000 munitions onto thousands of targets throughout Iran.
The level of coordination between the two militaries was also unprecedented, with both integrating real-time intelligence, autonomous systems, and precision targeting into a single operational rhythm. Throughout the war, they were updating strike lists within hours, not days, and closing the sensor-to-shooter loop in a much more efficient manner.
The campaign relied heavily on precision intelligence gathered by satellite imagery and rapid sensor fusion – an approach that mirrored the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)-driven tactics seen in Ukraine but was executed with far greater technological maturity.
Many of the platforms used in the war were not created yesterday but over the course of years.
“Iran believed it could offset Israel’s airpower advantage with missiles and proxies. They invested enormous resources into asymmetry,” former national security adviser Eyal Hulata told The Jerusalem Report in a recent interview. “They cared about nothing; but so far, it hasn’t worked.
“Since October 7, by and large, Iran’s proxies have been degraded, Iran’s air defenses have been crushed, and while their missiles make us nervous, the actual damage has been minimal compared to what they wanted and prepared for,” he said.
Hulata, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told the Report: “Our intelligence performance throughout these campaigns – starting with Iran’s first missile attack in April 2024 – has been critical. Everything begins with intelligence, and then with the ability to act on it at long range.”
According to Hulata, Operation Epic Fury “has also been an opportunity for CENTCOM to test new operational concepts. The US hasn’t been involved in a campaign like this for 20 years, and it’s generating real value for their military.”
Russia-Ukraine
The Russia-Ukraine war, now into its fourth year, has pushed countries around the world to rearm. European defense spending has skyrocketed. EU member states’ investment in defense has reached over €381 billion, rising for the 11th consecutive year. Their research and development spending reached almost €20 billion in 2025.
According to the European Council of the European Union, there was a 62.8% rise in defense expenditure between 2020 and 2025. There was also a 150% rise in member states’ defense investments between the same years.
The situation between Moscow and Kyiv remains the world’s most influential laboratory for modern military innovation.
According to Hulata, “The Ukraine-Russia war is trailblazing in many respects. It’s the first conflict where there is a combination of old-school technology and tactics, such as artillery, infantry, and armor, but also the best offensive and defensive drone technologies.
“Ukraine’s ability to stand firm is rooted in how effectively they’ve used technology. Yes, they’ve received money and equipment, but their real advantage is how quickly they adapt.”
Ukraine’s extensive use of drones, ranging from long-range autonomous strike systems to inexpensive FPV kamikaze aerial platforms to unmanned ground and maritime systems, has redefined the role of unmanned platforms in high-intensity conflict. Russia has responded with its own mass-produced drones (with significant help from Iran and China) and sophisticated electronic warfare (EW) systems, creating a technological arms race that evolves on a weekly basis.
The war has also revealed the centrality of commercial technology to national defense. Satellite imagery from private companies, cloud-based command systems, and AI-enabled targeting platforms have become essential to Ukraine’s battlefield resilience. These tools have allowed Ukrainian forces to maintain situational awareness, even when traditional military infrastructure has been degraded.
“What’s remarkable is how the Ukrainians have managed to fend off a much larger Russian force,” Hulata said. “Russia hasn’t been able to translate its size and dominance into decisive results. They are making progress, but slowly.”
Ukraine’s drone expertise, honed on the battlefield, is now in high demand by the United States and by Gulf countries that are being struck on a daily basis by the same drones striking the embattled European nation.
In late March Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Gulf States and Jordan and signed 10-year defense partnerships with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar for drone interceptors, software, electronic warfare systems and more.
“The Ukraine war showed everyone that you can think you have the right concepts and the right technology, but once the war starts you discover the gaps. The war in Ukraine pushed Israel to build a real defense tech ecosystem,” noted Shimon Tsentsiper, former commander of the Materiel Directorate of the Israeli Air Force.
“Europe’s rearmament began after [the war with] Ukraine [started] with rising defense budgets, more industrial investment, and major acquisitions, like Germany buying the Arrow missile defense system,” he said.
Kyiv hadn’t always been interested in drone technology, let alone in being one of the leading countries in counter-UAS technology. Prior to Moscow’s 2022 invasion, drones were “looked at like a toy,” Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, was quoted recently by NBC News as saying. “They couldn’t get it into their heads that it was the way of the future.”
Over the course of the war, Ukraine has built an entire ecosystem that designs, manufactures, and operates a variety of Blue/Yellow drones. The country has also become increasingly reliant on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for logistics, such as for transporting supplies, equipment, and more. Unmanned surface vessels (USVs) have also struck Russian navy vessels in the Black Sea. And just recently, Ukrainian media reported that a “surface unmanned carrier drone” downed a Russian Ka-27 naval helicopter with an FPV drone.
You read that right – an unmanned surface vessel launched an FPV drone that downed a manned Russian helicopter.
“The Ukrainians have become masters of drone warfare. We’re good, but we’re behind them, and the Americans have even more to learn. You only learn these things in combat,” Hulata said.
“Russia has built a military that can mobilize both ground and air forces in a way Iran simply cannot. But even the Russians have turned to Iran for capabilities like the Shahed drones, and Iran’s advantages in that domain have clearly influenced the battlefield,” he pointed out.
To Tsentsiper, who is now general partner at Ace Capital Partners, “the battlefields in Ukraine aren’t so different from what we’re facing. The same Iranian suicide drones used against us by Iran were sold to Russia, and Ukraine has been defending against them. Defending against systems like the Shahed drones is exactly where start-ups excel. In many cases, they can innovate faster and cheaper than big defense companies.”
However, the conflict has also exposed the limits of hi-tech warfare. The war has made it clear that technological superiority is meaningless without the ability to produce weapons and ammunition at scale.
Despite the proliferation of drones, UGVs, and AI-driven systems, the war has reverted in many ways to industrial-scale attrition. Even with hundreds of Shahed drones piercing the skies, artillery remains the dominant killer on the battlefield, and the West has struggled to keep pace with Ukraine’s demand for shells and air defense batteries.
Taiwan-China
Meanwhile, across the Indo-Pacific, the confrontation between China and Taiwan has intensified into a persistent state of military and technological competition. The region has become a crucible for next-generation defense planning.
China continues to expand its capabilities to overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses as it attempts to attack the island nation. According to a report by the Institute of War, Beijing’s defense spending continues to rise, even amid slowing economic growth. In 2026, Beijing proposed a $278 billion defense budget, a 7% increase from the previous year, underscoring its commitment to the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and long-term military readiness.
According to Tsentsiper, “China is developing extremely strong capabilities in robotics, autonomy, hypersonic munitions, and drones. Everything the Americans and Israelis are working on today is relevant to a future conflict with China.”
Taiwan, for its part, has drawn heavily from the lessons of Ukraine.
Taiwan’s government and military are investing in mobile missile batteries, hardened satellite communications networks, cyber defense infrastructure, and indigenous autonomous programs such as UAVs. Taiwan is also investing in a T-Dome system modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome for air defense.
And like Israel and Ukraine, the Taiwanese government is increasingly counting on the resilience of the home front.
Since 1949, the island nation has relied on the US to come to its aid should China invade, but there is concern that Washington might not be as reliable as it may once have been. Nevertheless, learning from the lessons of the ongoing war with Iran, Taiwan still sees the US as having powerful military capabilities vis-à-vis China.
“Taiwan is certainly taking notes from both Ukraine and Israel. They know they’ll face challenges far greater than ours,” Hulata told the Report. “The big questions are: How similar would China be to Russia in a conflict? How much would Taiwan behave like Ukraine? And would the US support Taiwan the way it has supported Ukraine?
“China is much stronger than Iran. Everyone is watching and learning, but the Chinese have already made it clear that any conflict will involve full-scale drone warfare – in the air and on the ground. Whether they can fully execute that vision is unclear, but they will deploy new and novel capabilities,” he said.
But, Hulata added, “It’s very hard to predict how such a war would look. The Chinese army has never been tested in battle. They’re disciplined and well equipped, but no one knows how they’ll perform under real fire.”
A common pattern
Across all three conflicts, a common pattern is emerging. Warfare is becoming increasingly autonomous, data-driven, and dependent on commercial innovation. Space and cyber domains are now as central as land, sea, and air. Supply chains have become strategic assets, and the ability to iterate quickly – to update software, adapt tactics, and deploy new systems – often matters more than the size of a nation’s arsenal.
According to Erel Margalit, former member of the Knesset Defense Committee, “We’re in the middle of a major geopolitical struggle. On one side you have the US, Israel, and NATO – though cooperation needs to be stronger and more strategic. On the other side, you have China, Russia, and countries playing on more than one side.”
Margalit, founder of Jewish Venture Partners, told the Report that “there are more and more ideas emerging in the defense world, and they’re being implemented very quickly.”
“It’s very clear that new technologies are being examined much more carefully, especially by countries that historically did not treat security as a priority,” he said.
For Tsentsiper, the collision of all hot spots “isn’t just about technology, it’s about inventory. For years, militaries preferred fewer, more precise, more resilient systems. But the Ukraine-Russia war showed that you need everything at scale: bombs, interceptors, tanks, ammunition.
“Israel learned the same lesson after October 7. We realized we were in a long war, not a one-month operation. Suddenly it becomes all about inventory, not just high-end tech,” he said. “One of the key lessons is to develop ‘good enough’ systems. Not everything needs to be perfect – it needs to be available, affordable, and fast.”
But, he said, “You must also have internal manufacturing capabilities. If you depend on others, you need a back-up plan or an in-house alternative that you can produce at scale in an affordable way.”
In all, Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury has demonstrated how real-time intelligence, precision strikes, and innovative technologies can reshape a regional conflict.
Ukraine shows how a smaller nation can leverage commercial technology to resist a larger adversary.
Taiwan highlights the importance of resilience and asymmetric capabilities in the face of a technologically advanced rival.
The world is not witnessing isolated crises but a single, interconnected shift in the nature of warfare. Defense tech is no longer developed in peacetime and deployed in wartime; it is being invented, tested, and refined on the battlefield itself.■