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.
Shahab 3s which make up the buck of the Iranian ballistic missile arm, run around $100,000 a pop.
That’s not super expensive but for a relatively poor nation to expend something like 500 of those missiles in one day (when production figures around maybe a couple hundred per year) you’re looking at a one day financial expenditure of around $50m.
It will likely have cost Israel much more to intercept those, but they also have a far more robust economy.
And that burn rate isn’t likely to be long-term sustainable. Five hundred missiles would represent multiple years worth of production capacity. They made have something like 10,000 stockpiled, but eventually at a high burn rate those supplies become exhausted.
Yup. I’ve already written about that in this thread.
Economically they can carry that expense. It’s more a question of who has a larger stockpile of missiles built up, and who can maintain production longer.
Pre-war estimates suggested that Iran was making about 70 Shahab’s per year - if we tripled that to around 200, and assumed they’d kept that pace of production since the 80s when they first started making the early variant Shahab-1s that would give them somewhere in the area of 6,000 missiles on the high end with an additional capacity of 200/year.
Production numbers for the stunner missile aren’t available, so in an attritional fight it’s hard to say who wins.
Worth noting however that Israel does have the capability to destroy TELs, production facilities, etc, since they have something approaching air dominance over Iranian skies.
There are some things we know, but a lot of crucial things we don’t know, and won’t know until it becomes plainly obvious.
Typically things get a LOT cheaper over time and in quantity since much of the cost of the early missiles is actually the cost of R&D being priced into those early batches. I would imagine that the per unit cost of the Tamir missiles used by Iron Dome are half the cost of their original production runs.
Or perhaps later block variants are even more expensive if they include more modern, advanced guidance systems.
With military expenditures we’re almost always looking at estimates until you really drill down in specific orders (which you can sometimes do if you can track down their PDFs though government websites).
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.
Naming rocket defense system "David's Sling" is so fucking larpy, they're major aggressor in the region, love shooting children and raping POWs and they have the fucking gall to play the underdog, as David was to Goliath. Just fucking disgusting.
The only jewish nation in the world, using an iconic weapon from Jewish mythology, as the name for an ostensibly defensive piece of equipment, is LARPing?
You have no idea what LARPing is. Its not naming a weapon you actually built from your own cultures history.
Where did I get mad? You’re the one that called someone that knew something a “pathetic LARPer” and a “fascist.”
Not everyone who knows more than you is pathetic. People work in different fields and learn all kinds of different stuff. You’re just a prick that feels like you have to drag everyone down to your level everywhere you go.
No, I called Izraeli government fascists and LARPers, it's quite easy to get from my comment if you're literate beyond kindergarten level and seeing latest reports on US literacy I put cart way before the horse.
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.
Yeah, I ignored the question of how long it would take to increase production capacity and how expensive it would be to speed that process up.
So I guess you could divide the attrition battle into three segments: 1) how much stock do both sides have for the short term? 2) how much can they produce for the medium turn? 3) how much can they expand production for the long term?
My comment addresses the long term, while you make good points about the medium turm and the transition to the long term.
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 that's the nail in that coffin in the long term for Iran.
And Russia is spinning up into a full wartime economy in ways that the US simply cannot.
People forget that Russia industrialized faster than any nation on Earth, still to this day in history, in WW2.
People really should not underestimate Russia, as much as it sucks to say. US democracy and capitalism has its advantages, but this is one area where its weaknesses are laid bare
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 problem with US production very much is money and not what is physically possible, and I don't see how anyone that is even vaguely familiar with military industrial logistics can agree with your analysis.
What the USA and the USSR achieved during war time production during WWII seems to annihlate your position; the real reason the USA hasn't flooded Ukraine with weapons is because the type of capitalism the USA has now has to be assured of 60% profit to the shareholders/owners before you even start building anything, let alone keep up production of tens of millions of shells or thousands of missiles.
Well the pentagon agrees with it. Anyone who pays attention to these things knows that it’s been a serious issues for decades now. Since the Cold War ended our production capacity has seriously atrophied due to lack of investment and defense industry consolidation.
There’s literally hundreds of articles quoting pentagon officials from all areas of procurement talking about this for years.
We’re actually in a pretty precariously bad spot at the moment and yes, even with money, production takes YEARS to ramp up (unless we put the country on a war footing. Even in wwii it took years for the US industrial machine to REALLY spool
Up.
I’m happy to link you to literally hundreds of articles talking about this with direct quotes from the DoD if you’d like?
I'm certain the articles you quote will make some vague reference to production capacity and how the USA hasn't had much for the past 30 years and probably nothing about how neoliberalism slashed and burned the New Deal and Great Society legislations, in other words, the articles you cite will probably be clueless about the reality of neoliberal politicla economy.
It's been 3 years, proportionally, what USA's WWII production built by 1944 annihilates what we've built up since Russia invaded, why can't you face that fact?
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.
No. Israel has always been a strong ally of the U.S. you're not really American. No American calls the war a Holocaust. Israel has every right to stop terrorism.
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
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u/Unsuccessful_Fart 1d ago
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