LOREN THOMPSON: Five Sobering Lessons From Iran’s Downing Of America’s Most Capable Drone.

Here’s one:

Lesser military powers are acquiring potent air defenses. The weapon used by Iranian forces to down the Global Hawk was an indigenously-developed Khordad 3 surface-to-air missile. Khordad 3 is a road-mobile air defense system capable of attacking up to four targets simultaneously to ranges of 50 miles and altitudes of 90,000 feet—higher than any U.S. military aircraft flies. The fact that a country as isolated as Iran could develop such a system speaks to the global proliferation of anti-aircraft technology. The Russian S-400 air defense system that China began testing last year and Turkey will soon field is far more capable, and a threat to any aircraft within 200 miles that is not stealthy.

I’m reminded a bit of the A-10, which was designed in the ’70s to rip open Soviet tanks. It’s a brilliant plane, but the A-10 is overkill for taking out jihadi Land Cruisers, yet isn’t survivable in a modern A2/AD environment. Stealth is rapidly becoming the baseline trim for dealing with even second-rate adversaries.