Today’s Department of Defense release highlights not just a military operation, but decades of foresight, innovation, and strategic discipline.

🔹 Engineering & Intelligence Combined

What began in 2009 with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s monitoring of Iran’s Fordow site evolved into a cutting-edge capability. The 30,000‑lb GBU‑57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) was precisely engineered—tested hundreds of times and customized in fuse timing and impact parameters—to penetrate deeply buried facilities

🔹 Strategic Collaboration & Planning

This achievement isn’t just about hardware. It reflects 15 years of close collaboration between military planners, intelligence analysts, and industry leaders—including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and the Air Force’s Quick Reaction Capability program

🔹 Execution with Precision

On June 22, B‑2 stealth bombers launched Operation “Midnight Hammer,” striking Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan sites with surgical accuracy. The MOP penetrated as planned—leaving minimal surface signatures while delivering deep destruction

🔹 What This Means for National Security

This operation showcases how sustained investment in R&D, intelligence integration, and interagency coordination can yield mission-defining capabilities. It exemplifies the strategic patience and partnership necessary for complex, high-stakes operations.

Key Takeaways for Defense & Tech Leaders:

Vision Meets Execution – Long-term defense projects require a clear vision, persistent funding, and cross-disciplinary alignment. Testing & Validation – MOP’s success was no accident—it was the result of rigorous modeling, simulation, and live testing. Partnership Power – Defense agencies, military services, and industry must collaborate seamlessly over years to deploy such capabilities. Strategic Deterrence – Precision technologies like the MOP expand strategic options, offering alternatives to broader or more escalatory responses.

As our world grows more complex, this operation demonstrates that when foresight, perseverance, and technological excellence coalesce, they can deliver decisive outcomes.

👉 Let’s discuss: How can lessons from this mission inform future innovation in defense tech and strategic deterrence?

In recent years, strategic surprises are everywhere. Russia and the United States were surprised by Ukrainian resilience in 2022, and Israel was surprised by the Hamas attacks in October 2023. Just recently, Iran was surprised by Israel’s preventive strikes in June 2025, probably also wrongly assessing the US resolve to strike the Iranian nuclear program if negotiations fail. Such surprises reflect not only foundational misperceptions about the environment, but sometimes also flawed self-perceptions. They also highlight the need of scholars and practitioners to study the phenomenon of surprise, take measures to prevent it, avoid hubris, and exercise deception to surprise our adversaries.

Perception and misperception have always been key topics in international relations, leading to strategic surprises. But strategic surprise, and surprise military attacks, are not just the result of intelligence agencies failing to provide early warning. They are not just intelligence failures. Surprises also result from the failure of decision-makers to adequately perceive the interaction of their decisions with the environment and the limitations of their ability to influence the adversary. Surprises create emotional and even traumatic effects, and provide the proactive side—the one that effectively surprises an adversary—with a substantial advantage.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, for instance, were not merely a failure of US intelligence to provide early warning. They also reflect a US misperception of al-Qaeda’s strategy and capabilities, and a “failure to imagine” the terrorist threat to the homeland. In 2016, when US intelligence failed to provide early warning of the Russian intervention in US presidential elections, this was also considered a “failure of imagination.” The United States misperceived Russia’s strategy and its operational concept of using cyber operations and social media to attack the core of US democracy.

The United States has also misperceived its partners and allies, not just its adversaries. This was the case, for instance, with the collapse of the Iraqi security forces in 2014, the collapse of the Afghan security forces in 2021, and recently, the resilience of Ukraine in the face of the Russian attack in 2022.

Recently, Israel was surprised by the Hamas surprise attacks in October 2023. Among other things, this intelligence failure, which is also a defense and policy failure, was the result of a Hamas deception. In many respects, it resembles the Israeli strategic surprise in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Both 2023 and 1973 reflect Israeli misperceptions of adversaries’ intentions and capabilities, as well as flawed self-perceptions. In both cases, Israel suffered from hubris and overestimated its superiority. At least in 2023, this was also a failure to imagine that Hamas intended to conduct—and is indeed capable of conducting—a mass invasion into Israel, reflecting a years-long cultural flaw.

But surprises and misperceptions are not only experienced by Western countries. Iran was surprised in 2020 by the US operation to assassinate the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani. Russia was surprised by the resilience of Ukraine and by its own inability to achieve swift decisive victory in the war initiated by Vladimir Putin in 2022. Hezbollah in Lebanon was surprised by the Israeli willingness to conduct precise airstrikes in Beirut and take down the organization’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah. It overestimated the accuracy of its understanding of Israel and underestimated Israel’s risk calculation. And recently, Iran was surprised by the Israeli preventive attack against Iranian nuclear and military establishments in June 2025, and apparently also by Israeli tactics of eliminating nuclear and military leadership, with Israel conducting strategic deception to open this campaign on the night of June 12.

What are the reasons for so many fundamental surprises and misperceptions? Some of these might emanate from the overreliance on advanced technologies, or technophilia, often typical of Western democracies. The abundance of data and advanced sensors and collection methods used by intelligence agencies might create the impression that more data equals more knowledge, and that successful operations reflect strategic insights. This, unfortunately, is an illusion of certainty.

Other surprises and misperceptions emanate from arrogance, overconfidence, and hubris. Both Western and non-Western countries sometimes overestimate the influence of their deterrence activities over the adversary’s motivation to change the status quo, as well as their own superiority. Failures of imagination, therefore, often reflect overconfidence in one’s own capabilities, not just a flawed intelligence assessment of the adversary.

Other surprises are the result of deception, a practice that has remained relevant even though the nature of warfare is changing. Strategic deception, like the German one against the Soviet Union in 1941 or the Egyptian one against Israel in 1973, is successful when it reinforces extant perceptions, which in hindsight prove to be flawed analytical paradigms and misperceptions. This is probably what happened to Israel in October 2023 vis-à-vis Hamas, and what happened to Iran in June 2025 vis-à-vis Israel.

Several lessons for Western national security leaders stand out from this analysis. First, surprises and misperceptions are still relevant and still require dedicated attention. Leaders might feel that they know their adversaries and allies, but they often don’t. Intelligence agencies might feel that improved collection leads to better strategic analysis, but it often doesn’t. Scholars might feel that a multidisciplinary study of military surprise is obsolete, but it isn’t.

Second, avoiding arrogance and overconfidence is a crucial condition for policy and intelligence, and for escaping the risks of deception. While learning from success is as important as learning from failure, resting on one’s own laurels after success and developing hubris might lead leaders to fall victim to deception. Moreover, contrarian culture and a skeptical approach are necessary for avoiding “failures of imagination.”

Third, our adversaries can also fall victim to deception. Authoritarian systems sometimes underestimate the resilience of Western nations, and their intelligence systems rarely contradict the foundational conception of the leader. Iran probably did not assess, for instance, that the United States would indeed strike its nuclear facilities after negotiations to reach a nuclear agreement failed. Such conceptions can and should be manipulated to conduct strategic deception and surprise the adversary. By studying adversaries’ and allies’ strategic culture, the probability of successful deception can be increased. And at a time when malign actors are already employing deception and surprise is as relevant as ever, doing so is an imperative.

Dr. Itai Shapira (IDF colonel, reserve) has served for more than twenty-five years in Israel Defense Intelligence as an intelligence analyst and manager. He has published books and articles about Israeli intelligence culture and about Israeli strategic cultures and practices strategic intelligence in the commercial sector.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.