Brief, top level review of Iranian missile performance: of the 30 or so hits on Israel, very few missiles actually struck anything important. There are 2-3 hits on Ramon AB, but not on anything important (they hit taxiways), and some possible hits at other airbases.
Once again, the demonstrated accuracy of Iranian missile systems just isn't all that great. Even the big salvo they got through at Glilot shows only 1/5 hits, and that "hit" is assuming the Iranians were targeting a warehouse, which I'm very skeptical of.
I have not seen much evidence of across the board increases in Iranian accuracy - the strikes on Glilot probably demonstrate a ~500m CEP...that's the only salvo where enough things got through for me to even attempt a CEP estimate.
The small salvos Iran attempted throughout the war - not by choice, but by necessity due to Israeli airpower success - simply don't have the density to achieve high rates of target destruction given their accuracy. You may recall that I said this last year after Nevatim.
The IRGC requires great increases in accuracy if they really want a credible conventional deterrent. At the current level of performance, there is effectively nothing stopping Israel from conducting the same operation in the future with similar results.
The fact that the IRGC needs a salvo of at least 300 missiles to actually do anything notable simply means that if Israeli strikes can disrupt and degrade salvo density, Iran has no military force that can respond enough to achieve deterrence.
If Iran can achieve a missile force that can destroy a specific target with a salvo of 30, the story changes, and Iran may get there eventually. But there is real tension between accuracy and BMD penetration, and that is going to be an immense bottleneck for Iran.
In a week or two I will write up a long blog post with more formal thoughts.
Of course, Iran can hit cities fine, which they've been doing - and this has resulted in about 30 Israeli casualties. There may be a couple more hits on things of military value that may come out, but the point is: Iran cannot actually target the Israeli military with any confidence, and Iran does not seem capable of doing enough damage to Israel to actually deter them.
I have no interest in getting dragged into some debate in which data is cherry picked to demonstrate accuracy or effectiveness under ideal circumstances. The core fact of the matter is Ramon, Nevatim, and the other airbases operated effectively uninterrupted throughout the entire war, and that fact alone constitutes a grave military failure.
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A new thread with some brief, top level thoughts on the missile statistics. I think people are misreading a couple of the statistics. We are still not that far out from the end of the war, so treat everything I saw as having imaginary error bars of about 10%.
I've seen multiple statements about number of Iranian missiles launched. Some say 500, some say 550, some say 591, some say 631. That's a big delta, probably produced by counting uncertainties.
The some Israeli media says 36 missiles impacted populated areas. There are other impacts at military sites but very few of them did any damage. Impacts on taxiways, things of that nature. Effectively open fields.
Couple of incomplete thoughts at this point:
Iranian missiles have been, so far, about as effective as previously thought. Huge variation in accuracy, and only some are getting through.
Israeli military capabilities are also basically as good as previously thought. The surprising thing was not Israeli air dominance, but that they chose to undertake a much wider campaign than previously predicted.
I don't have an answer to where the multiple Tor units that are supposed to be positioned around Tehran have gone. I don't think they've all been struck. Possible Iranian air defense C3 has just completely collapsed.
Some notes, given Iran's "new" missile base (I have some theories on where that thing is but nothing definitive) on Iran's missile production:
Iran has at this point rebuilt the buildings destroyed in Israel's raid. There's been what appears to be a lull in production given # of missile crates moving about, but in the grand scheme of things I'm skeptical its going to make that much of a difference.
The fact that the buildings were rebuilt doesn't tell us much - what is important is what was IN the buildings - mixers, casting equipment, etc.
We counted! 32 impact points at Nevatim, with a small degree of clustering. They landed multiple hits in the area of F-35 hangers, with one possible direct hit, but not a lot of damage.
Takeaway: some F-35s got really lucky.
In one instance, two impact craters were observed inside a set of F-35 hangers, just narrowly missing any of them.
Next time, Israel may not be so lucky.
Quantity of near misses also suggests that this was indeed a straightforward overwhelm of Israeli missile defense. Israeli defense sites are not safe from Iranian attack, and if Iran so chose, they could choose a target that would be sure to generate Israeli military casualties.
Short thread on the potential benefits of conducting an abnormal ICBM test like the one the PLARF just conducted from Hainan Island:
Generally the PLARF tests ICBMs from the interior of the country, out in the northern desert shooting east to west. This is satisfactory for most systems tests (many missile tests are actually conducted to test a specific subsystem)
The problem is that this forces you to use a lofted trajectory. Distance from the ICBM test site to the target ranges is around 2000-3000 kilometers, so China has to fire their ICBMs very high to compensate. That's maybe a quarter of an ICBM's actual range.
I've been at it again. Russia is building a deployment facility likely for the operation of the Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile at a nuclear warhead storage facility outside Vologda. reuters.com/world/europe/u…
Couple of major points:
Nuclear warhead and missile checkout facilities are both present at this facility. This will likely be a high readiness system.
The nine launch platforms under construction, likely for Burevestnik, are fixed. This isn't a survivable target, which worries me somewhat.