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Ponti Min's avatar

Do we know whether Iranian IRBMs have multiple warheads or decoys? I'm assuming no to multiple warheads (which wouldn'tr be useful given that they have conventional warheads).

As for decoys, they evidently don't use them or they are not very effective.

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billy mccarthy's avatar

the advantage that israel had was it was defending a relative small area, what kind of a defense would be needed to cover an area the size of ukraine

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Alexander Fernandez's avatar

A very detailed and timely analysis. The performance of Israel’s layered missile defense—particularly the unexpected success of David’s Sling and even Iron Dome against MRBMs—deserves close scrutiny, especially for NATO planners assessing their own vulnerabilities.

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the long warred's avatar

The bourgeois expectations of safety first in war make me long for the old communists, for that matter the Takfiri…

Save money, hand ‘em a shovel and tell them figure it out themselves.

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Francesco Salesio Schiavi's avatar

Thanks for the insightful analysis. One question remains for me: Do you think Israel's interception rates would have been worse if Iran had had the capability of launching more MRBMs in single salvos against limited objectives? Above, you mention that: "In some instances, penetration rates appeared to have reached 10 to 20 percent, while in other Iranian salvos, zero or near-zero percent of incoming missiles hit any relevant targets." This is because, of the 550 MRBMs launched in total, only part of them were launched in salvos counting approximately 30-40 systems at once. I believe this will be the central element of any future Iranian studies on the performance of their missiles. If Tehran had been capable of retaliating with more systems (and Israel has reportedly done much for preventing this since the very beginning), what would have been the consequences? Thanks.

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Policy Tensor's avatar

One of these ballparks is wrong: 31 missiles made impact with damage; thousands of buildings were destroyed (FT). I suspect it is the former. This is also suggested by the fact that there were at least 1,400 casualties.

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L Swift's avatar

Very interesting analysis, thanks for the information.

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