Missiles in the Air, Tensions Everywhere: What We Can Learn From Iran's Missile Attack

Here is what Iran's missile attack against Israel can tell us about the capabilities of modern missile defenses and the lethality of ballistic missiles strikes.

Picture: Israeli Defense Forces

On the evening of October 1st, Iran launched a large-scale missile strike against Israel, dubbed "Operation True Promise 2". According to the latest reports, the attack involved approximately 180 ballistic missiles, making it one of the largest missile assaults in history.

Here is what we can learn from the attack in terms of offensive and defensive missile capabilities.

Battle Damage Assessment

It appears Iran targeted three main sites: Nevatim airbase, Tel Nof airbase, and the headquarters of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service.

Iranian missiles already struck Nevatim airbase in April with minimal effect. This time, video imagery shows a pretty large number of missile projectiles impacting the airbase.

Satellite imagery from Planet, analyzed by Prof. Jeffrey Lewis and his team at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, suggests that the base has indeed been hit by over 30 ballistic missile warheads.

The airbase, which is home to Israel’s F-35 fleet, quickly became the subject of Iranian media reports claiming the destruction of several of Israel’s most advanced aircraft. Decker Eveleth, a Research Associate at the Center for Naval Analyses, published annotated satellite imagery on his personal blog regarding the damage to F-35 shelters.

One shelter appears to have been hit, as suggested by a hole in its roof. However, it is unclear what damage the impact caused or if an F-35 was inside at the time. The shelter did not collapse, nor does it appear significantly damaged, potentially indicating that the warhead did not detonate.

So far, no direct evidence has surfaced to support Iran’s claims regarding F-35 destruction. I still think there is a good chance that Israel’s F-35s were not present at the airbase during the attack.

Tel Nof airbase appears to have been struck by several ballistic missiles, with at least one impact resulting in secondary explosions, likely from stored munitions. Next to hosting military aircraft, the airbase is also suspected to house Israeli nuclear bombs. But even if these were present during the attack, they are likely stored in specially secured, deep underground bunkers, out of reach of Iranian ballistic missiles.

The Mossad headquarters on the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv remain unharmed. The closest ballistic missile landed approximately 500 meters away in Gilliot, with no other impacts reported.

Another missile struck and damaged a school in Gedera, south of Tel Aviv. Overall, there are only a few reports of minor injuries from shell shock and flying fragments, and one individual died after being hit by a falling spent rocket booster outside of Jericho in the West Bank.

What can we learn from the attack

Israeli missile defense

The actual damage from the attack, in terms of destroyed infrastructure rather than just craters, appears minimal. However, a substantial number of Iranian ballistic missiles penetrated Israel’s integrated air and missile defense network.

Although Israeli and American officials have not disclosed the exact number of intercepted missiles, the percentage of ballistic missiles that penetrated the defenses is considerably higher than in April's attack.

In that instance, around 94% of all ballistic missiles were intercepted, along with a significant number of cruise missiles and long-range one-way attack drones. The 30+ warheads impacting Nevatim alone indicate that over 16% of incoming projectiles got through. The overall number probably lies somewhere between 20-30%.

Several potential explanations have been proposed, such as the launch of more concentrated missile volleys targeting fewer objectives and the use of more advanced ballistic missiles compared to the previous attack. It appears that Iran utilized larger numbers of Fattah-1 and Kheibarshekan medium-range ballistic missiles, which exhibit greater maneuverability during the terminal stage of their flight, complicating missile defense efforts.

Another potential reason that has been advanced, which I find most plausible, is that Israel exhausted a large part of its interceptor arsenal during the previous missile attack and was unable to replenish it in time, resulting in fewer targets successfully intercepted during this attack.

This being said several videos on social media appear to show successful intercepts both inside and outside the atmosphere, suggesting the use of a substantial amount of David Sling, Arrow 2, and Arrow 3 interceptors.

Another theory suggests that Israeli missile defense systems calculated the trajectories of incoming ballistic missiles, and only intercepted projectiles that posed a potential threat to critical infrastructure or population centers. Missiles expected to land harmlessly were not targeted to conserve costly interceptor munitions. Iron Dome, Israel’s lower-tier missile defense system, is known to operate on this principle.

The problem with this theory is that Iran’s medium-range ballistic missiles, especially more modern ones that were used in greater numbers during this attack, are known to retain substantial maneuverability during their terminal approach. As a result, it’s not possible to calculate the missile’s trajectory with certainty until relatively late into the flight.

John Ridge, a U.S.-based defense analyst, who you should follow on X if you haven’t done so already, has found this graphic on the 9M723 Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile, which illustrates this issue.

The exact impact point of the 9M723 missile cannot be determined due to its ability to maneuver during the terminal stage of its flight. Depending on the distance traveled, the impact point will fall within a varying-sized area. This also applies to Iranian missiles. As a result, most Iranian ballistic missiles have to be engaged, unless it is clear relatively early on that the impact area falls outside any high-value target.

This attack once again highlights the challenges of defending against large-scale missile raids, even for countries with effective and redundant integrated air and missile defense systems. This should give pause to countries like Germany, which may think they can rely almost entirely on defensive measures to protect themselves against Russian missiles. While you might successfully defend against the first attack, what about the second or third?

Iranian missile capabilities

The attack also tells us something about the quality of Iranian missiles and the challenges involved in constructing lethal ballistic missiles.

After the attack, some have argued that Iranian missiles essentially failed due to the high levels of inaccuracy they have demonstrated.

Others have suggested that Iranian ballistic missiles performed relatively well, but that the attack highlighted inherent limitations in ballistic missile technology. See, for example, this post on X by the aforementioned Prof. Jeffrey Lewis.

I believe both perspectives are mistaken.

At the crux of the matter is the prospective circular error probable (CEP) of Iranian ballistic missiles that analysts attempt to derive from the attack. CEP denotes the smallest possible radius r of a missile within which 50% of all launched missiles will fall. 93% will fall within 2r, while 7% of missiles will fall outside of 2r.

Several people now suggest that because the closest impact to the Mossad HQ is some 500 m away from its prospective target, the CEP of Iranian missiles is 500 m. This is of course wrong. CEP is a probabilistic concept and wild misses like these are, in principle, fully in line with a much smaller CEP.

But the people who say that Iranian ballistic missiles are performing as well as can be expected also draw the wrong conclusions. Looking at the spread of impact points across Nevatim airbase, and the fact that Iranian ballistic missiles only landed a single hit on an F-35 shelter, can’t be satisfactory from an Iranian perspective.

Keep in mind that the Iranians claim that for their most modern medium-range ballistic missiles, the CEP has shrunk to below 30 m. Evidently, this level of precision was not demonstrated during the attack. While the attack certainly looked impressive, states typically don’t launch 180 ballistic missiles for some fancy pictures and video imagery. Normally, you would want to cause real damage, which was not achieved.

This episode therefore indicates that building accurate and lethal ballistic missiles remains a substantial challenge, especially when these missiles have to travel more than a couple hundred kilometers. I have no doubts that the Americans are capable of doing it. The Chinese probably have figured it out as well. The Iranians, as it appears right now, are still quite a distance away from achieving this objective.

Conclusion

Overall, this attack again underscores the dominance of missiles in modern warfare and highlights the critical importance of missile superiority in achieving strategic objectives. Both effective missile defenses and offensive missile capabilities are essential. I sound like a broken record on this point, but it’s maddening beyond belief that European militaries don’t seem to grasp this point.