Stopping the Iranian attack would have forced Israel to use advanced – and expensive – defenses

Iran’s decision to fire some 180 high-speed ballistic missiles at Israel suggests that Tehran sought to inflict massive damage in Tuesday night’s attack, in contrast to the missile and drone attack that was well-served in April.

Their tremendous speed makes intercepting ballistic weapons difficult, but initial reports of no deaths inside Israel and one in the West Bank suggest that despite the numbers of rockets fired, it was a military failure, although some weapons or shrapnel appear to have been They fell to the ground.

Iran’s Emad and Ghadr missiles, used earlier this year, are estimated to travel at or more six times the speed of sound on impact, and take 12 minutes to fly out of Iran. That would be over 4,600 mph. But Iran said it had deployed the Fateh-2 supersonic missile, with a maximum speed of 10,000 miles per hour.

It is estimated that Iran has an arsenal of about 3,000 ballistic missiles, although the original calculation was made by the United States two and a half years ago, so the number may be higher. Tehran will want to retain the vast majority of its stockpile in the event that the conflict with Israel escalates into all-out war.

Launching such a large number of ballistic missiles in a few minutes also represents a serious effort to overwhelm or exhaust Israel’s air defenses. Because they are advanced, interceptor missiles are expensive and their stock is uncertain.

Stopping ballistic missiles in flight is primarily the task of the American-Israeli long-range Arrow 3 and Arrow 2 systems, which were first used during the war between Israel and Hamas, and which are supported by the David’s Sling medium-range system. The well-known Iron Dome is used for short-range interceptions, often of rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza.

In April, a former financial adviser to the Israeli army’s chief of staff said the Arrow missile typically costs $3.5 million (£2.8 million) at a time, and David Sling interceptors cost $1 million (£800,000). Removing 100 or more missiles would easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars – although the missiles themselves would cost Iran £80,000 for one or more.

At the time, Tehran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, said it had given neighboring countries 72 hours’ notice of the planned attack — which occurred two weeks after Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus. This time, Iran acted within days of Israel killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

However, warnings of an attack on Tuesday began circulating from US sources two hours or so before the missiles were launched. It is unclear how this information was obtained, but it may have come from satellite images, communications intercepts, or diplomatic notification. There were unconfirmed reports that Iran informed Russia before the attack.

It is not immediately clear how many Iranian missiles hit the ground; In the April attack, out of 120 ballistic missiles launched by Iran, only nine passed through, causing minor damage to two air bases, which means in narrow military terms that this attack was also a failure.

Iran used more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles in April, but on Tuesday it dispensed with slow-moving drones, suggesting they are ineffective against an adversary with a sophisticated air defense system. Cruise missiles may not have been used either.

Shahed drones, which Russia also uses extensively in Ukraine, are relatively slow and can be easily shot down by fighter jets. Cruise missiles rely on maneuverability to evade air defenses, but they are also slow compared to ballistic weapons—Iran’s Pavah cruise missile travels at about 500 miles per hour.

Ukraine, which has been under sustained attacks by Russian missiles and drones since the start of the full-scale invasion, released its own interception rates in August. Its success rate will be lower than Israel’s, partly because the length of the war means it has run out of some types of short-range interceptor missiles.

The Supreme Commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Sirsky, said that while 63% of drones were intercepted and 67% of cruise missiles were stopped, that dropped to 4.5% when it came to Russian ballistic missiles.