“That would likely have included expensive, precision-strike drones or manned aircraft in highly coordinated attacks to ensure success, not necessarily the lower-cost, one-way version of the suicide drones,” he explained.

“The U.S. has this lower-cost alternative to hit everything at once, but then the very expensive, high-precision assets would likely have gone directly after leadership on Saturday,” Chell added.

A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that the compound strike was a “wildly bold daytime attack.”

“It caught the senior leadership off guard on a Saturday morning during Ramadan and on Shabbat in the daytime,” the official added.

“We hit the senior leaders right out of the gate,” the source told Fox national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.