MORNING GLORY: Has President Trump ordered the big re-think?

Historical intelligence failures like Pearl Harbor parallel modern threats as Ukraine and Israel demonstrate new drone warfare tactics, raising concerns about America's vulnerability.

Surprise at this level wins battles, but does not guarantee success in a war, of course, as the defeat of Imperial Japan by the Allies in 1945 demonstrates. Still, this scale of intelligence failure has proven catastrophic again and again, as on 9/11 and 10/7.

Ukraine awakened the world to the far-reaching implications of new technology for warfare when, on June 1 of this year, it launched a surprise drone attack targeting multiple Russian airbases deep inside Russian territory, including locations in Siberia. More than 100 small, commercially available drones were smuggled into Russia and launched from trucks near the airbases, striking and damaging or destroying many bombers in Russia’s fleet of strategic bombers. Ukrainian drones attacked airfields in five regions stretching across five time zones: Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur.