In the past few days, the skies over Israel have transformed into a war zone. As warning sirens wail through the cities, families hasten to take shelter. Others, trusting in Israel’s air defenses, watch the onslaught. One by one, hundreds of deadly Iranian missiles and drones have been intercepted or allowed to hit unpopulated areas. But some of the ballistic missiles have penetrated the defense system, crashing into buildings, killing dozens, and wounding hundreds.

In the World War ii Battle of Britain, German bombers saw a high rate of casualties. But in Iran’s onslaught on Israel, it was a war of machines—missiles and drones versus interceptors. Human casualties only occurred when defenses were breached. Israel’s air defenses have proved superior to the onslaught, and fatalities have been limited because of Israel’s June 13 preemptive strike against Iran.

Early that morning, Israel attacked dozens of Iranian military sites with the stated aim, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, “to thwart the Islamic regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat.”

To achieve this feat, Israel reportedly used 200 F-35I Adir fighter jets for precision air strikes. It also used “explosive-carrying quadcopter drones, rockets and other sophisticated equipment located inside Iran for precision attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists, military leaders, antiaircraft batteries and surface-to-surface missiles,” reported the Times of Israel.

Israeli forces had also established a secret drone base inside Iran. They smuggled attack drones into Iran using a variety of means, including trucks, shipping containers and even suitcases, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing sources familiar with the Mossad operation.

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin announced on Monday that the Air Force had successfully destroyed a third of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers, 120 in total. Without this preemptive strike, Iran could have fired dozens of more missiles each day, potentially overwhelming Israel’s defense system and causing hundreds of deaths.

One can only imagine the utter destruction Iran could have achieved if it had enriched enough uranium to mount its missiles with nuclear weapons. If just one had penetrated Israel’s air defenses, the casualties would have been not in the dozens or hundreds but in the hundreds of thousands.

The Iranian onslaught would have been catastrophic if the regime had managed to achieve what Israel just did. After just four days of precision strikes targeting Iranian air defenses and missile systems, Israel declared air superiority over Tehran, leaving the Iranian capital exposed and vulnerable. Had Iran executed such a masterstroke, Israeli cities would have been left at the mercy of the Iranian regime that has vowed to wipe them out. Israel would have ceased to exist.

Warfare of the Future

With its close to 90 million people and a land area of 618,000 square miles, Iran at first glance appears to be the superior foe compared to Israel’s 9 million people and 8,500 square miles. However, Iran has suffered for years under critical sanctions that keep its military innovations limited and its economy struggling—while Israel has access to the best Western systems and innovations of its own.

Israel, no doubt, is the superior military force in this conflict. However, unlike Iran, it is not seeking mass casualties. If it were, the events of the past days would have been very different.

Imagine for a moment what a destructive force Israel would be if it had the destructive will of Iran. After taking out Iran’s air defenses, it would have followed the attack with a barrage of missiles striking deep into Iranian cities, killing thousands of people and putting the nation in utter chaos. It would have used its fighter jets, submarines and ballistic missiles to fire nuclear bombs on Iran’s capital and other major hubs. Within days, Iran would have been totally devastated and Israel would have no fear of retaliation.

Now combine Israel’s recent military success with something we saw in Ukraine’s June 1 attack on Russia. Under the code name “Spiderweb,” Ukraine executed a major drone strike that targeted several air bases deep in Russian territory. It involved 117 first-person-view drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins on trucks with remote-operated roofs. The drones were launched near Russian airfields as deep in the nation as Siberia and the Arctic, striking strategic aircraft designed to carry Russian nuclear bombs. With the aid of artificial intelligence, the drones targeted areas to inflict maximum damage, such as weapons pylons carrying cruise missiles and over-wing fuel tanks, the Kyiv Post wrote on June 2. Ukraine claimed it damaged or destroyed 41 aircraft and degraded 34 percent of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers, causing $7 billion in damages.

Now instead of 100 Ukrainian drones, take 100,000 drones, or even a million, spread all over an unsuspecting country in trucks, container ships, storage depots, warehouses and distribution hubs. Once activated, they could strike not only military air bases, but within mere minutes they could hit radar sites, power grids, cities, individual decision-makers from the lowest rank to the heads of state and government. Imagine the tiniest of drones with the tiniest of explosives targeting vulnerable human beings. Imagine medium-size drones carrying small nuclear weapons to destroy military bases, while underwater drones targeted submarines, warships, aircraft carriers and civilian boats.

Now imagine the attack being paired with a large-scale cyberassault that not only cripples the nation’s defenses but causes autonomous vehicles, civilian drones and automated machinery to run amok.

The erupting chaos would make the nation an easy target for a conventional military attack and a ground invasion.

No Fear of Retaliation

“When the first atom bomb dropped on Japan, the world changed,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “AI and the End of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’” in February 2024. “For the first time, mankind had the capability to erase entire nations and even humanity itself. Since then, though dozens of far more destructive weapons have been tested, they have never been used in war. Why? It was not love toward neighbor. It was fear of ‘mutually assured destruction’—the probability that a nuclear strike would meet with nuclear retaliation.”

Even without nuclear weapons, the fear of retaliation has stopped countless wars. When retaliation could mean the destruction of one’s own nation and life, the deterrence is all the greater.

Recent developments, specifically in AI, are questioning this surety with frightening conclusions. As Mr. Flurry wrote:

Six years ago, a rand Corp. paper suggested that artificial intelligence could upend the foundations of “mutually assured destruction” by the year 2040. With the speed of AI developments in recent years, this could happen much faster. …

During the Cold War, governments reasoned that launching a nuclear war would be suicide. They are starting to look at this differently now. They reason if they can advance ahead of everybody else with AI, they can overcome this principle that has prevented nuclear wars! …

A 2019 Forrester Research report concluded that most cybersecurity decision-makers believe offensive AI will increase the scale and speed of attacks to a degree “that no human could conceive of.” The report concluded: “These attacks will be stealthy and unpredictable in a way that enables them to evade traditional security approaches that rely on rules and signatures and only reference historical attacks.”

Five years later, what they predicted has become reality!

Future AI military advances have a myriad of implications we can’t even now consider. But think about what would happen if the U.S. trusts in all these AI advances but then calls to battle and nothing happens. It could well be that a nation with unexpected superior technological abilities will have shut down its military!

Attempts to foresee the military upheavals ahead can only scratch the surface of a rapidly transforming battlefield. Yet Bible prophecy reveals the most vital and staggering details. As Mr. Flurry wrote: “Bible prophecy reveals that one nation will overcome the fear of ‘mutually assured destruction.’”

Ezekiel 7:14 prophesies: “They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.”

“In other words,” Mr. Flurry wrote, “the missiles, airplanes and drones will not fly! Since the 1990s, I have believed this could refer to the effects of a cyberattack. With recent advances in AI, such a crippling attack becomes much more likely.”

The biggest military surprise attack of all is yet ahead, and it will affect everyone on Earth. Why? Because God’s “wrath” is upon us.

God is full of wrath because we have turned our back on Him and refuse to heed His warnings. God is indeed getting ready to intervene in the affairs of men. Unless our world repents, humanity will suffer the terrible consequences of disobedience, as Mr. Flurry explains in his free book Ezekiel—The End-Time Prophet.