Flex, Scale and Repeat: How Fighter Pilots Wage War When They Have to Drone Shoot Downs

By: Dawn Zoldi

As dawn broke over the Negev on April 13, 2024, as over 300 drones darkened the skies over Israel, the airspace became a crucible for innovation, courage and rapid adaptability. At the AFA Air, Space and Cyber Conference in 2025, key players gathered to dissect those harrowing hours, moments that ushered in a new paradigm of air warfare and rewrote the rulebook in large-scale air-to-air drone defense.

Moderator Tobias Naegele, Editor-in-Chief of Air & Space Forces Magazine, opened the panel “Dangerous Game: Lessons Learned from the April 2024 Drone Attack in Israel” by emphasizing the unprecedented complexity and urgency of the April attack. Maj Benjamin “Irish” Coffee, the 48th Fighter Wing A Staff Director, and Lt Col Timothy “Diesel” Causey, Commander of the 494th Fighter Squadron, then shared riveting firsthand accounts of the chaos and clarity under pressure that defined their mission.

On the night of April 13, 2024, the night sky over Israel erupted as the government of Iran unleashed a massive aerial barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles, its first direct attack of such scale against the Israeli homeland. 

As alarms echoed across cities and air raid sirens cut through the darkness, pilots and ground crews in the forward-deployed 494th and 335th Fighter Squadrons quickly realized they were entering a battle unlike any in recent memory. Tasked with defending U.S. coalition partners, these F-15E aircrews leapt into action with no advance warning of the scale, direction or complexity of the onslaught that lay ahead. 

Over the course of a single night, they exhausted their missiles, maneuvered through showers of falling debris and faced the daunting challenge of landing in “alarm red” conditions with every touch down shadowed by the threat of continuing attack. 

Meanwhile, ground teams worked knife-edge shifts, racing to refuel, rearm and relaunch F-15 Strike Eagles in record time, all while the very bases they protected remained under direct assault from the air. It was a night defined by chaos, courage and the relentless demands of a new kind of warfare where drones matter.

People are the heart of operations, but the squadron’s operational philosophy helped guide their actions that fateful night. Coffee reflected, “My command mission planning philosophy was that our plan needed to be flexible, scalable and repeatable. If we had those three things, our plan could work in any airspace and any environment and be used again in the future.”

Even so, preparing for an onslaught of potentially hundreds of drones seemed surreal. Causey reflected, “It was like a little bit of disbelief in the back of your mind,” he said. But that didn’t stop him or his fellow Airmen from preparing and getting the squadrons ready to go, vetting the plan and going through the whole process.

Coffee described the iterative tactical playbook. “Whoever is making corrections, learning from their errors, debriefing and then having an iterative process, that is who’s going to win the war, right?” 

So that’s exactly what the squadron did. They secured critical counter-UAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) training and rehearsed high-risk scenarios. That decision, he explained, paid off when theory collided with reality later that spring.

Causey recalled his own personal moment of realization as the radar screens lit up with targets. The massive assault involved well over 300 low-altitude threats. What they had practiced in theory became their reality. And it required more than tactical excellence. It demanded leadership, bravery and adaptive learning under fire.

Mission success relied on decentralized trust. Generals had briefed the squadron personally, articulating left-and-right boundaries and empowering tactical decisions: “All three of those generals standing in the squadron with us…gave us commander’s intent. This is the risk I need you to take. And then I need you to make sure that you are not taking too much risk,” Coffee reflected. 

“They pushed that trust down to us, and risk acceptance. They allowed us to execute. And so, as a squadron commander, I also pushed that down, which is really important later when you have young dudes executing,” Coffee said.

Communication between flying and ground units, particularly maintenance, emerged as a vital theme. “It’s a team sport. Shooting down drones is a long process,” Coffee explained. He credited the fighter generation squadrons for accepting personal risk and acting with extraordinary resolve. “To see those young airmen without direction just make it happen was phenomenal.”

Combat that night was a kinetic marathon. Maintenance teams and fighter crews worked shoulder-to-shoulder, pushing mission readiness to its limit. 

Coffee described how the rapid refueling and weapon reloading “was a huge cornerstone” for what happened on April 13th. While the team had practiced it a couple of times, the rhythm during the fight involved exhausting missiles and cycling jets back into battle, all while under fire. 

The physical risks were real and immediate. Coffee called out Senior Airman Fryer, who he said exemplified this warrior ethos. As bombs exploded overhead, he raised his hand to ready aircraft so the pilots could get back into the fight.

Causey recalled the young, newly minted flight leads had to step up, when he and Coffee exhausted their munitions and amidst “explosions overhead.” One, right out of weapons school, had to take the command role usually reserved for more experienced pilots. “He took it in stride. He realized there was a gap that needed to be filled. That’s the type of airmen we have,” he said.

Maj Coffee also championed the virtues of the two-person F-15 Strike Eagle crew. “When Diesel and I fly, we rarely talk tactically in the moment. I trust him empirically…we are task sharing. What two people on one aircraft can accomplish is our most unique and extraordinary capability.”

The officers advanced technology and tactics in parallel. The tempo of change was relentless.  Aircraft turn times hit all time lows, about 25-minutes. New munitions, such as “a rocket with basically the ability to lase it in,” required fast integration and knowledge transfer. 

In each phase, after-action reports, training tapes and real-time academic exchanges kept the entire coalition fighting smarter. Insights flowed through the squadron like lifeblood, continually refined and shared with coalition partners. Even those with no prior shoot down experience had internalized lessons learned, training tapes and multiple versions of tactical papers.

The Airmen meticulously documented every mission iteration but to prepare the next generation. “War is a learning competition. How do you get ahead of the power curve?” asked Causey. Coffee answered,“We debrief a ton. We write after-action reports, and the after-action report is always about what mistakes were made so the next people don’t make that same mistake.”

Causey explained the gravity of his responsibility. “I never thought I would be a part of a large scale combat operations. You never assume you will. Now I have a responsibility to share those lessons, not just with our squadron, but with partner nations and our alliance,” he shared.

Coffee agreed with great emotion. “It is my responsibility to continue to share my experience to give them everything I experienced, because they’re the ones that are going to win that next war. I can just provide a small piece of inspiration or tactical learning to help them along the way.”

What does the April 2024 drone shootdown teach? The art of war in the 21st century is baked into a cycle of iterative learning: flex, scale, and repeat. Teams must change faster than adversaries, codify their failures and breakthroughs and cultivate the humility to listen to newly minted leaders as much as seasoned veterans. Causey put it best: “War is a learning competition, and whoever learns fastest wins.”

Watch the official documentary “Dangerous Game” on YouTube.