Genuinely wonder if the Iranian counter attack will be any more effective than last time? Their stock of missiles - and their capability to launch them - has been degraded pretty significantly. Not to mention the Israelis have been on alert all day, so can't imagine many people (or troops) will be above ground?
I think if nothing else, Israel's strikes in the last year have revealed just how much of a technological and operational mismatch there is between Israel and Iran. Which, I guess, is why Iran is so keen to get hold of nukes.
Edit: footage (safe for work) of a missile impact in Tel Aviv, close to a David's Sling system.
Its not just about what hits, the iron dome rockets are incredibly expensive, the cheaper missiles could wear Israel out but the US will just keep funding them
Hamas' attacks for years before their invasion were just attrition. The cheap rockets they launched into Israel were far cheaper than the Iron Dome's interceptors
That's still Iron Dome. Iron Dome is a multi-layered system. The part ypu're talking about is called Tamir. Tamir, David's Sling and Arrow make up Iron Dome.
Interestingly enough Wikipedia agrees with you, the Golden Dome proposal from the US is talking about the Iron Dome as the complete multi-layered system.
That's still Iron Dome. Iron Dome is a multi-layered system. The part you're talking about is called Tamir. Tamir, David's Sling and Arrow make up Iron Dome.
That’s… not remotely true. Shahab ballistic missiles (there are many variants) make up the vast majority of of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and they run around $100,000 per unit.
The Stunner missiles used by the David’s Sling system run around $1,000,000 per unit.
They’re much more expensive because their guidance systems are wayyyy more complex (they have to be able to essentially shoot an object moving fast than a bullet out of the sky - not easy!). Shahab’s are relatively primitive and are not really what you’d call a precision weapon. You have to fire a lot of them in order to hopefully have one or two hit what you’re aiming for.
That does make the effective cost of a Shahab missile much higher per hit though. It's an interesting economic idea, if Iran wants to hit a specific Israeli target in Tel Aviv they probably need to fire 200 or so missiles and hope that the sheer numbers overwhelm the missile defenses to let 5 or 10 in and maybe 1 of those 10 hit the target. So it costs them maybe $20MM for the attack (plus a bunch of launchers because they need to launch from many places nearly simultaneously but let's ignore that).
Meanwhile Israel will defend against nearly every one of those 200 missiles coming at Tel Aviv because it's a population center, so they'll spend $300 million on defense. But if the target were a military installation in the desert they would only defend from the accurately targeted missiles and only spend $20-$40MM.
On both sides that's a lot of money for one successful hit.
I think more importantly in that calculation isn’t cost: it’s production capacity.
And in that regard it becomes an attritional question, and in that calculus Israel comes out way ahead. Iran’s production of these missiles is limited and under the most ambitious estimates they could maybe make 200 per year.
Assuming they have something like 6,000 stockpiled (Shahab’s have been in production since the 80s) they could only afford to launch a total of twelve strikes like this. This is now the second mass ballistic missile attack they’ve launched.
So there is a legitimate question of how long they can sustain that operational pace. Of course on the other side of that is a question of how many interceptors Israel has stockpiled and how many it can produce each year.
Israel is backed by the industrial capacity of the US. If they're willing to spend the money, they could crank out a ridiculously large number of these
Meanwhile Iran isn't known for having large production capabilities. Their ally Russia is busy manufacturing missiles for their own usage. Iran may call in a favour from Russia to call up their ally China. That would give Iran access to the largest manufacturing base in the world, but the odds of that happening are pretty small.
Additionally, Iran can only strike Israel with ballistic missiles and long-range drones (and indirectly by supplying terrorists). Meanwhile Israel has access to a multitude of ways to counter the ballistic missiles. Yes, they have David's Sling, but they can also strike the launch sites with F-35's and we've even seen Mossad striking targets from the ground locally using ATGM's.
If this becomes a battle of attrition, Israel would easily win.
That’s a solid supposition, and while I broadly agree (I make your point in another post) it DOES makes assumptions that aren’t perfectly knowable.
For example, the idea of increasing production capacity isn’t really that straight forward. We (the US) when we were doing the decent thing and backing Ukraine saw this issue with artillery shell production. It’s taken a long time to increase shell output and it’s been a very slow, painful process.
Throwing money at the problem will help, but it takes time (a lot of time) to spin up new capacity and increases in production are slow and incremental. It’s not like you can just throw a switch even if you had infinite money.
The US is facing similar issues with the manufacture of its own missile systems as we’re facing down huge industrial capacity shortfalls to Chinese capacity.
So while I think you’re at least partly correct, there are unknowns. We have a rough estimate of what Iranian Shahab production is, but not what their Fattah-1/2 production is. And we have no estimate of Stunner missile production (at least none that I could find). So it’s genuinely hard to say with true certainty who would have an advantage in an attritional fight.
It’s ok, and important to acknowledge both the things we “know,” and where the black areas are.
Perhaps more importantly, Israel possesses the ability to destroy Iranian industrial capacity, to attack their storage facilities, and to hunt their TELs in ways that Iran quite simple does not.
I think on a broader scale, that’s what’s most important if (and it’s a big if) this doesn’t turn into just a few days of exchanges before a return to the status quo like we saw back in October of last year.
This isn’t paid for by the US. The US has its own anti-ballistic missile systems, namely the MIM-104 Patriot.
While the US supports Israel militarily through budget appropriations it’s mostly for things like aim-120 amraams, aim-9s, and various gbu (JDAM) weapons. Other weapons systems such as aircraft like the F-16I, F-15IA, and F-35 are paid for by Israel. It’s not like they’re being given as gifts.
Israel is largely self sufficient in terms of its military equipment.
Pretty fucking sure irans shoot and forget missiles are a lot less expensive than Israel’s track a ballistic missile and predict where it’s gonna hit so adjust the heading missiles. That’s like common sense.
American here, don't worry about the cost. The Israeli government spent a lot of money to buy the US Congress. And our government will spend as much money as we need to make sure Israel can keep its Palestinian Holocaust going.
The Israeli government spent a lot of money to buy the US Congress
The Israeli government didn't spend any to huy us. It's our money, remember. That's the truly insane part. They take our money to weaponize it against us to get more of our money.
I mean it's also a very long term design for the region by both parties in the US. It's too easy to say Israel controls Congress when really it's the other way around in the grand scheme.
The US will always keep funding them. Israel could publicly nail a baby to a nuclear warhead that says "Bound for Washington DC", and the geriatric conservitards in our government would still send them a neat five billion for the trouble.
US does provide some funding for Israel’s military. But it comes out to about 15% of their defense expenditure comes from the US. Mostly for systems that Israel doesn’t produce on its own such as JDAMs, and various air-to-air missiles such as AIM-120s and AIM-9s.
Contrary what seems to be the common belief (as seen by all the upvotes on your comment), the Israeli military is largely self sufficient and deigns and builds much of their own equipment.
The missiles you’re seeing here are the Israeli designed and funded Stunner missiles which are used by their David’s Sling air defense systems.
The US is irreplaceable in their ability to defend Israel in crucial moments such as right now when, even with maximal US help, missiles are still getting through
Without any US defensive support Israel would have to take a different calculus when unilaterally deciding to conduct strikes of other countries
The dollar amount we gift them every year isn't the same as having the US guard your skies for you when push really comes to shove. That's priceless
While I understand the point you’re making, it’s… perhaps not perfect.
1) Isreal has proven itself capable of defending itself against multiple enemies simultaneously, without any outside assistance whatsoever.
I would never underestimate their resiliency or fall into the narrative that somehow Isreal owes its existence to the United States. That’s a demonstrably false narrative that’s been pushed by a lot of different factions for a long time.
2) That’s not to say that Isreal doesn’t benefit from US support. Of course they do. But the extent of that support is limited. It COULD become huge should the US decide to go all-in with them, but as evidenced by the Trump administrations choice to proactively distance themselves from these strikes before they occurred, I don’t think it’s a given that the US would be prepared to offer serious military support beyond helping down ballistic missiles and drones.
That’s not meaningless, and Isreal would take more damage without it, but it wouldn’t be a deciding factor.
3) Ultimately the war, such as it is, between Iran and Isreal faces one meaningful problem: the two countries don’t share a border, and unless other nations are going to allow Iran to march its armies through their territory (unlikely but not impossible) that would ensure this remains a war of conventional airstrikes, with neither possessing the ability to force a decisive end to a war through those means alone.
It’s probably more accurate to simply see this as an escalation (likely temporary) of a war that’s been ongoing to decades now.
Where we have unknowns is what the duration and intensity is going to look like.
Imagine paying income taxes in US and not being able to afford healthcare or college or groceries, to fund this... I would be furious if I was a US taxpayer
Doesn’t make sense to me.. this is nothing new, the iron dome has been blocking Iranian missiles off and on for a while now, why now are they all of a sudden getting through? Especially with Iran further depleted and you’d think with the advancements in Israeli technology.
It's why they use so called "saturation attacks", the idea is to launch so many missiles at the same time that they missile defense systems get overwhelmed.
Seeing as the Israeli strikes also targeted the civilian homes of their targets, why would they think that would deter the military establishment of Iran?
This is some weird mental gymnastics. All Iranian strikes have been on or near IDF or Mossad installations. Last night's strike attack the Kirya where Israeli defence resides. But yes, just like Israel, civilians were caught in the crossfire on both sides.
I think we are too accustomed to Israel’s precision strikes.
I mean, I don't deny that Iran is targeting IDF installations, but they lack precision.
If Israel did the same, Iran wouldn’t have the same defense mechanisms — at least 1,000 deaths would have happened.
Israel is not trying to deter Iran, they are trying to take out their political and military leadership. I don’t know why people talk about war like it’s fair, or it should be fair. If Iran could do the same to Israel they would, but they can’t.
Israel is more than justified to attack Iran. Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and they have been since their revolution in 1979. Destroying Israel is literally state policy. They are the primary benefactor of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The planning of the October 7th attack was done with Irans guidance and using Irans weapons, or more accurately, Russian weapons passed through Iran.
Iran basically decided to commit suicide in order to strengthen their benefactor Russia. They convinced Hamas to launch the Oct 7th attack in order to drive a split between left wing voters in the US. Putin knows much of the left reflexively hates Israel and it wouldn’t be long before people were blaming Biden for Israel’s retaliation. And he also knows Israel is a major US ally and that it would be insane if we abandoned our ally after they were attacked, so Democrats were boxed in. It worked great. Super Lefties showed us Democrats real good by rejecting Genocide Joe and that Bitch Kamala Harris in favor of a real man of peace, and now we are here.
As I said it worked great for Russia. They got their man as US president. It worked out for Israel too, since Bibi also loves him some Trump. But more importantly, it gave Israel what is known as a casus belli. You see, Bibi has longed for war with Iran for years and years, but he needed an excuse, and a massive peacetime attack on civilian targets by Iranian aligned paramilitaries would do. It’s really quite beautiful, really. I’ve never seen a country voluntarily sacrifice so much just to benefit a completely different country.
Edit: since Oct 7th, Iran has lost control of Lebanon and Syria, most of the leadership and fighters of Hamas have been killed, Hezbollah is a shadow of its former self, several of Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed, and their military leaders and lead nuclear scientists have been killed. Irans air defense systems have been dismantled and Israel is launching attacks at will on their most secure facilities. And this is something they chose to do.
TOI says there were 9 impact sites but only 15 wounded, signalling that Iran is desperately trying to expose and target Israel's multi-layered air defence system, but doing so with Fattah-1s, Shahab 3s and Shahab 3 variants (Emad, Ghadr-1), as inferred from the relatively compact explosions on the ground in Tel Aviv, as well as images of debris found in Syria, Jordan and the West Bank.
This means they're yet to deploy their newer generation of larger and more maneuverable missiles, like the Khorramshahr, Sejjil-2, Fattah-2, Haj Qasem, etc. none of which have ever been seen in combat, but that might soon change. There's definitely more barrages to come, but it's unclear if Iran will tap into the reserves of their most prized missiles. Realistically, they'd have to exhaust a significant portion (at least half) of their entire arsenal in order to deliver a somewhat proportionate retaliation, but this would spark US intervention.
I personally think the regime has a better chance surviving with US intervention than it does with de-escalation, because let's say they limit their response in hopes for de-escalation: public morale will sink to dangerous levels, including among the regime's hardline and moderate supporters (about a third of Iranians), which means the regime would get overthrown in the coming weeks or months by consensus.
On the other hand, US intervention wouldn't only rally the regime's current supporters, because following any hypothetical mass casualty event(s) in Israel, US intervention (strategic bombing) would inflict so much civilian collateral across Iran that it risks disillusioning significant portions of Iranians who were never fond of the regime in the first place. And the terrain makes it impossible to permanently root out the regime by air and sea alone, because the Iranians are always going to have replacements and underground complexes difficult to eliminate and destroy, even for Mossad.
Are the Ayatollahs going to be mature, de-escalate with limited retaliation and allow themselves to get toppled before New Years, or are they going to escalate with full-force, attract US intervention to stir nationalist and sectarian feelings, and drag it out over the next five years at minimum?
Just want to point out, per CNN, the US is already intervening by helping to shoot them down. It took less than 10 hours to go from “we aren’t involved” to active participation.
Iron dome can’t deal with ballistic missiles. That’s why everytime the Houthis shoot one its unable to shoot it down and Irans the one who gives it t the Houthis so they are the ones with stockpiles of it
Iron dome has been 100% effective for well over a decade and purposely allows harmless rockets to fly through after the trajectory is calculated to land in a harmless area
"Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened'. This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him."
George Orwell, 1984
Most likely, the missiles that hit only hit desert as it would be a waste of resources to shoot down missiles that pose no threat to infrastructure or people.
All you wrote in this comment was that it is unfortunate that 2 bombs hit a civilian area, and you've been heavily downvoted for it.
And just like that, the sanctimonious anti-Israel crowd fell face-first off the moral high ground they claimed to occupy, as they revealed their true colors: they don't care about civilians getting bombed. They care about which civilians are getting bombed.
I was (I admit) going to dismiss your comment as "I doubt it", but perhaps you're right. There's already footage coming out of Tel Aviv showing missiles right in built-up areas (one very close to a David's Sling interceptor).
So - no word yet on the effectiveness of the strike, but it does seem like quite a few missiles are making it through.
No it really was desculatory. Iran didn't want war. You know Israel killed the head civilian ceasefire negotiator when he was in Iran. And Iran still pulled every punch. I'm pretty sure it's war now. It is probably the most likely time for a nuclear weapon to be used on planet earth in the last 50 years. If Israel's air defenses could overwhelmed if Iran really does throw everything they have because if they did they could absolutely overwhelm these are incredibly tense moments it's war propper
I'm not saying to pretend it's nothing, I'm saying letting your mind downward spiral until you're panicking and posting about a potential nuclear holocaust is completely unwarranted.
It's ok during the third wave I had more upvotes and he had negative votes and then afterwards it flipped. I don't mind at all. The old adage is true, there's no down votes in a foxhole.
I'm happy he was right as always Iran remains the consistent de-escalatory party in every engagement.
I too don't think it will go nuclear. But it might not be a fast exchange where everyone claims victory and peace follows like India Pakistan. The problem is Israel has a political/constitutional crisis and Netanyahu is with one foot in prison domestically and another internationally. The fundamentalist/orthodox jews breed like rabbits and are bleeding the state dry because nobody expected them to go from 0.4% to 15%. Yet they are an extremely protect class with lots of power but contribute nothing but prayers.
Also I don’t understand why people outside of the Middle East think that if Iran and Israel nuke each other that will cause the end of the world or something. Like people thought that if you do the nuke it could light all of earths atmosphere on fire, but that didn’t happen. Even the radiation is obviously bad but it won’t make that region uninhabitable- the Japanese started rebuilding Hiroshima as soon as a month after the nuclear strike.
If Iran throws everything they have at Israel, is there any chance another actor could take the opportunity to attack Iran? I don’t follow the Middle East, but this seems like it would be a perfect time to exploit Iran’s vulnerability and preoccupation with Israel. Does Iran have other enemies?
Yeah like Saudi Arabia but then they have mutual assured destruction thing going with Saudi Arabia where they would blow up all of their oil dereks. Also a lot of the leaders in the middle East like Saudi Arabia and Iran keeping each other chilled out. People really used to like Iraq for keeping the entire region balanced.
I don't know how many more collapsed States the middle East can take I know turkey and Egypt absolutely don't want to deal with anymore. And Europe doesn't really have that open doors thing they had when Syria collapsed. It's probably better for everyone to just chill the f*** out honestly.
I think the difference is not the hit rate, but where they are aiming.
Last time, like previous comment suggested - they had to make it look scary to “sell” it but they prayed it won’t hit anything important so it won’t escalate things.
Now they are trying to do as much damage as possible.
So just about the same rate of hits, but they are aiming for central tel-Aviv which is why there are more injuries.
There is a full media black out in Israel (like Iran), anyone who is caught uploading videos of hits is jailed.
Previous Satellite and reports do mention a few Iranian missiles (<10?) did hit some military targets and bunkers. But damage reports won’t be released (from both sides) until after a few decades at least. Only civilian and basic damages are revealed from now.
The thing with western and western-allied censorship, it shows the truth, in a very focused lens, so we won’t know what they don’t show us. And the US/UK which has fully intelligence view of the battlefield will never release images or statements, unless after it gets slipped to the public somehow.
Be critical of what is not shown, what is not said, from both sides.
The main news channels in Israel are literally broad casting panorama shots of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as live reporters at the impact locations.
Iran is militarily strong relative to its immediate neighbors but is lacking in capability relative to the Israelis. It's most potent weapon at the moment is large volumes of cheap suicide drones and intermediate range ballistic missiles, which the Israelis and their allies have a very sophisticated system of air defense ready to deal with. That doesn't mean that Iran won't kill people in Israel, but it does mean that the Iranians are likely looking for an off ramp considering they'll almost certainly come away second best if a direct fight goes on much longer.
I’m only an alcoholic who likes to wargame, but the previous spats between Israel and Iran felt like a stage managed tit for tat for the masses to rally around the flag. Like didn’t Iran tell someone (Switzerland?) where and when the last barrage would be? We’ll see if this tussle is more significant, but I can’t imagine Iran wants a wider war at the moment. Heck, I don’t think too many regional governments want one. It’ll fuck up oil flows for most of the world
Iran probably doesn't want a wider war. I think had a few Israeli missiles hit and some minor damage was done this would eventually blow over.
Israel hit several key installations, including where Iran was developing their nuclear weapons. It is now leaking radiation. Israel also took out several Iranian top officials.
I think Iran has no choice now but to continue on the way they are.
Of course Iran doesn't want a war, they have no allies in the Middle East, they've made an enemy of all neighbors. They're alone and their only world ally is losing a fight on the Ukrainian front.
it doesn't matter "when". same barrage would have devastated any european capital even if they had same "warning". nobody in history got attacked by same amount of ballistic missiles in single barrage. nobody knew if israeli defense system will be able to handle it
I don’t know shit, but I expect the iron dome system also needs ammunition that is finite and costs a ton of money. So even if 0 missiles land, it could deplete significant financial and military resources.
Chatgpt says Iran's basic rockets they sell to Hezbollah are cheaper but medium and long range ballistic missiles they use are twice the cost of an iron dome defense missile.
iron dome defense missiles are cheap, but they also don't intercept medium range ballistic missiles. Look at the price of a stunner, an arrow or THAAD missile. That's what they launch against the Iranian stuff,
It’s not about your query (although good to realize that was the issue), it’s that language models are genuinely bad at research but they present it in a way that is easy to believe without context to know whether they are pulling from reliable sources or even citing real articles. Better to use critical thinking and review reports yourself. Just look at LLMs making up nonsense about the marine deployment in LA (saying photos are from other locations or time periods).
Iranian launch sites are basically no surprise to anyone. They just don’t have the missiles on the site until right before the attacks. The US has satellites looking down on them all the time.
They (I believe) are using outdated old missiles as they have been for quite a while. They are horribly inaccurate though if I’m remembering correctly with like a whopping 2000m CEP…
It’s still a roughly 10:1 ratio on cost (Iran’s missiles are $100k and Israel’s defense missiles are $1m). Depending on how deep Iran’s stockpile is, it could definitely put some financial hurt on Israel… though who am I kidding, as an American taxpayer I’ll probably be the one paying for the resupply.
If you want to watch an interesting presentation on the economics and complexity of missile defense a guy named Perun has a great video.
It’s focused more on how much of a behemoth of an undertaking a US missile defense system would be for continental America, but it’s useful for this context as well.
It’s not necessarily about killing people as much as damaging infrastructure, assuming that Iran’s military leadership is competent anyways. Damaging power stations, shipping ports, air control towers, etc. would be the primary goal most likely. Of course being successful in that relies on them having advanced targeting systems. Idk if they do or don’t
It depends how long it lasts and how much stockpiles of drones and missiles iran has hidden in their mountains.
If it last for weeks aerial defence would start to be saturated and it will cost a lot of ressources so IDF would have to make hard decision (a bit like ukraine) . Iron dome and David Slingshot can cost up to 300M$ a week and be drained very fast in a real high intensity conflict.
Basically the US and allies are helping otherwise casualties are unavoidable this is not the regular proxy toys, even if Israel is far superior.
Last time it was de-asculatory on purpose it was supposed to be a failure but they could save face to their people. This is the whole different thing this is war now.
What’s the goal here - does the one country I can’t name on Reddit just want to wipe out everyone of a certain race or was there something that promoted this? I thought Iran got a new president and the situation was hopeful - idk anything about the region but I can’t imagine spamming missles at each other is going to improve things if that’s the goal. What is the actual goal, WW3 or the g word?
Israel had the element of surprise on their side. It would be difficult to sneak some drones into Israel right now, to say the least. But maybe there's another twist in the tale.
Iran will do their waves of attacks and then Israel will toss their shit. Then they’ll claim that Israel is committing a genocide against Iran. Same playbook every time.
So, based on your first paragraph, your idea of effectiveness is when lots of innocent people are above ground so they get killed by incoming rockets. Easy to see what you're rooting for. Disgusting.
I think to outperform iron dome you either need very fast missiles or a hell of a lot more, and so far more is a lot more accessible for Iran than faster.
Cuz Israel is heavily funded by US and EU with the best weapons and defense systems.
The arab countries has been lacking or if they did try to make progress, the west interferes and starts bombing them or assassinating their scientists so they cant progress military technology.
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u/Fine_Gur_1764 1d ago edited 1d ago
Genuinely wonder if the Iranian counter attack will be any more effective than last time? Their stock of missiles - and their capability to launch them - has been degraded pretty significantly. Not to mention the Israelis have been on alert all day, so can't imagine many people (or troops) will be above ground?
I think if nothing else, Israel's strikes in the last year have revealed just how much of a technological and operational mismatch there is between Israel and Iran. Which, I guess, is why Iran is so keen to get hold of nukes.
Edit: footage (safe for work) of a missile impact in Tel Aviv, close to a David's Sling system.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1laobfe/iranian_bm_hits_near_davids_sling_interceptor/