The U.S. Is Losing the Information War: A TV Drone Can Tip the Balance

As yet another U.S. bombing halt takes effect in the sixth month of the Iran war, the United States has demonstrated that it can smash Iran’s military piece by piece, but it continues to lose the information war in Iran, here at home, and around the world.

It is because too many senior American officials are still treating television (via Internet or broadcast) as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The War Department treats global visual media as though it had forgotten about 1991’s Desert Storm media triumphs and as though there was no need for domestic and foreign public support. The little bit being tossed out is reminiscent of a kind of bureaucratic ‘let them eat cake.’ 

That will work...right up to the U.S. mid-term elections when the Iranian influence campaign ever so slightly tips the balance wrong way.

Iran is not fighting the U.S. to a standstill. But Iran is gaining ground in the Information War because it has adapted to the global media environment far more effectively than has Washington.

I call this form of conflict "SOFTWAR": The hostile use of global visual media to shape another society's will by changing its view of reality. I and three other like-minded colleagues have taught this kind of warfare to decades of U.S. War College, Staff College, and Intelligence College graduate students since the early 1990s. But very few have actually adapted.

Unfortunately, the entire Iranian military and intelligence structure has adapted, since at least 2003...and has even stolen the term “SOFTWAR” of this American invented warform in its own publications!

The Iranian use of SOFTWAR helps explain why the United States has spent billions of dollars over five months while Iranian drone and missile attacks continue, and Iranian televisive defiance continues. Washington is using Cold War systems and industrial-age doctrine against an asymmetric enemy that has organized itself for the Infosphere.

Iran's theocratic dictatorship is fighting a four-dimensional guerrilla asymmetric war across land, sea, air, and information. Its military losses have reduced its ability to retaliate against U.S. forces directly. Its remaining attacks are therefore selected less for battlefield effect than for global media impact: Oil tankers and cargo ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a desalination facility and power plant in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil hub, a liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar, a U.S. communications center in Jordan, and American naval facilities in Bahrain all produce frightening images and headlines.

Iran absolutely times its “onesie-twosie” counterattacks in its own early-morning hours, so that the images arrive during the American prime-time news cycle. The objective is not merely to damage a target, but rather to shape the story being told about the war here, there, and around the world.

Meanwhile, Iranian propagandists study the American audience, especially younger people hostile to the Trump administration, and target them with AI-generated Lego-character videos. The goal is to unite disparate American factions, erode domestic support for the war, and above all, influence the midterm elections.

When Iranian military officials such as Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Zolfaghari or IRGC spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi speak, they are usually seated behind a desk with the Iranian flag visible. Their uniforms are immaculate, their beards trimmed, and their war faces dramatically lit. Most important, they look through the camera lens directly at the audience. This is Television 101.

Viewers who speak no Farsi still receive the intended message: discipline, seriousness, and defiance.

American military spokesmen often squander the same opportunity.  They ignore, disdain, or have never considered acquiring the skills to effectively communicate on television.

General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is informed and capable, but at his Pentagon press conferences his televised manner is that of a serious squadron commander consulting his notes as he briefs the weather to the three rows in front of him.

He should instead address the millions watching beyond the room. Place the camera a few feet away, frame him from mid-bicep to just above the head, and have him look through the lens to establish and maintain direct eye contact with the intended audience. The reporters can sit on either side. The difference would be immediate.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the Combatant Commander of U.S. Central Command, makes a similar mistake. He often appears in a green camouflage uniform designed to defeat electro-optical observation - including television - rather than in the Navy service uniform designed to convey authority, experience, and command.  He also stands too far from the camera for viewers to read his face. His folksy Ozzie Nelson manner may work before Congress or the Navy League. It does not put an enemy on his heels.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, whose warrior credentials are undisputed and whose television experience is well noted, knows more about televisive perception than his military subordinates but is underperforming. To quote from his address to General Officers last year: "We just have to be honest. We have to say with our mouths what we see with our eyes... to point out the obvious things right in front of us."

So, Mr. Secretary, from an Instructor who has been teaching strategic Information Warfare since you were in grade school, here are the obvious things in front of us: You are no longer pitching to the Fox demographic. You need a tighter camera shot, better lighting, and a visual style designed for wartime communication.

Your presentation is crowded with distractions: A tight European-cut suit, patterned tie, clashing flag pocket square, and hair product that makes your scalp appear to glisten under studio lights. Deep-set eyes require careful lighting. Without it, viewers may read strain or evasiveness where none exists. The Pentagon has fixed studio lighting for briefings at the podium, and it should be properly adjusted for you. Alfred Hitchcock understood the rule: Dress the leading man simply and light him properly so the audience watches the man rather than the costume. Cary Grant in "North by Northwest" remains a timeless example.

Iranian officials would earn an “A” in my information warfare seminar, I'm sorry to say. Too many American officials are still treating television as a record of an event rather than a battlefield in its own right. The American officials bungling this Information War would receive an “F” ...and three hours of detention.

That needs to change.  Now.

The TV Drone and the U.S. Unit To Run Its Counter-Propaganda Function

The United States inadvertently helps Tehran by concentrating almost exclusively on visible military targets while leaving the regime's domestic television system intact. Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) continues to broadcast dozens of TV channels across Iran giving only the Mullah’s  view of the war. Thus, the only information that the vast majority of Iranians are getting comes from television and radio stations controlled by the Iranian government. With access to the Internet long ago cut off by the regime, the only “news” the body politic receives is pure propaganda.

Meanwhile, Washington destroys weapons and commanders but fails to effectively contest the information environment that gives those losses political meaning. It seems no one has thought to bomb the TV transmitters and follow up with drones to broadcast information to the Iranian body politic.  Iran's real engine is that selfsame body politic - a population that has endured repression and the reported killing of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators. Yet today, outside of a small fraction of Iranians who may have Starlink receivers, the United States has no coherent means of speaking directly to those people.

It's not as though the United States lacks the technological wherewithal, it’s simply that the U.S. military has weakened its own capacity to respond. In 2024, the military decommissioned the EC-130J aircraft of the 193rd Special Operations Wing, the only U.S. airborne radio and television broadcast platform. The aircraft were judged too vulnerable for modern combat, but no announced drone replacement has assumed the mission.

The solution is simply to take any drones with the proper range and endurance, such as the dozen-or-so now-obsolete Predators sitting in the boneyard at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and strip them of their reconnaissance gear. Next, rewire the on-board Ku satellite antenna to optimize its broadband receive function and then hook that to any Phase Alternating Line, or PAL, TV transmitter and dipole antenna compatible with Iranian home TV receivers.

By flying the drones from semi-autonomous Kurd areas in eastern Iraq three hundred miles to Tehran, each will have about a five hour endurance over downtown.  By orbiting at or above 15,000 feet the drones will not be easy targets for shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles.

As the drones reach their selected orbit points, precision guided munitions launched from distant attack aircraft take out all the transmissions towers in the area, leaving the airwaves clear for live programming from the drones.

The Iranian dictatorship, which absolutely must control information flow, will then be forced to turn on its radars so that its sophisticated antiaircraft missiles can shoot down the drones.  Except that when they do, every U.S. air defense suppression weapon known to man will be directed at those sites.    

Programming the video from the drones on a real time basis can be fixed by reactivating the 1^st  Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual) that I designed for the War Department’s Office of Net Assessment a decade ago. That Unit, composed of some 50 men and women from the California Air and Army National Guard used their state-of-the art civilian occupational skills from Hollywood and the Silicon Valley to pioneer new and effective methods of Information Warfare. Unfortunately, the Obama sequestration chopped the 1^st JSU(V) with the grace of a blunt meat ax. But fortunately, it could be up and running again in about two weeks!

In summary, at present America possesses overwhelming kinetic power but lacks a direct means of reaching the Iranian public at scale: A doctrine which resembles a mechanic who responds to an engine warning light by cutting the wire to the bulb. The warning disappears. The failing engine problem remains.

The United States is not losing the military contest with Iran. It is losing the contest over what the world believes the military contest means.

A nation can destroy every designated military target and still lose the war if its enemy controls the images, the timing, and the story. Information warfare is not an optional elective. It is the core course. And America, so far, is failing.

The answer is a genuinely four-dimensional American military capable of operating on land, at sea, in the air, and throughout the Infosphere. Information Warfare should be driving the organization and the direction of the campaign, with kinetic operations supporting the strategic influence objectives - not the other way around. Iran already understands this hierarchy.

Chuck de Caro was hired by Ted Turner as CNN's 1st Special Assignments Correspondent.  In 1986, he started  AEROBUREAU a huge flying newsroom. He also advised TV’s JAG and NCIS. Since 1991 he taught at the National Defence and National Intelligence Universities and for 24 years served as outside consultant to the War Department’s secretive Office of Net Assessment and progenitor of the 1st Joint SOFTWAR Unit (Virtual).  

image: A woman waves an Iranian flag next to a billboard showing a graphic of a man wearing a shirt showing the face of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed during a joint U.S. and Israeli strike on Feb. 28, with words calling upon the avengers of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most beloved historical saints, in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)