2024 Iran–Israel conflict

All those munitions intercepted east of Israel had to land somewhere.



Iran Spectator
@IranSpec
Iran issues final warning to Jordan.

"If Jordan continue to participate in the Zionist aggression against Iran and its allies, Jordan will be directly targeted”

Translated Quote from Iran’s FM

Another strange hole without burns

More mathmatics questions

has 'no choice' but to retaliate 

You attacked first, you moron.

-Netanyahu has been ignoring calls for the last 48 hours of leaders that want to convince him of aborting retaliation.

-Iran has around 1500 ballistic missiles ready for launch for retaliation purposes. note they only mention the ballistic missiles themselves.

-iran states retaliation will be immediate in case of any israeli attack.

-iran stated they would also deploy an weapon they have never before used


So....let's see what will happen the next hours/days.

Airbornewolf wrote: So....let's see what will happen the next hours/days.

The Zionists are  getting jittery about hitting Iran before Russia starts arming them up...



@ALAMO:  Even the old Scud had a speed of Mach 5, which actually puts it within the hypersonic range. The Fatteh 1 missile (
1400km range) flies at velocities of up to 13-15 Mach, generating enough compression of air to produce plasma.


@Hole you're right Israel doesn't have the bestest AAD system. Their interception rate is 99.99%, while the Ukrainian rate is at least 106%

Eugenio Argentina wrote: Iran’s deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri:

Israel needs to know that in case of another mistake they will not have 12 days, the response will be given in matter of seconds not in days or hours.

My highlight

Bilal Tiwana
@bilal73827370
BREAKING

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri says that if Israel makes another mistake it won't have 12 days, 1 day or an hour, the next slap will be delivered in seconds and has already been approved
9:40 PM · Apr 15, 2024
·
Were Israel to attack with their F-15/F-16 and especially the slower F-35 it seems to me likely that all the runways in Israel will be unusable before those aircraft, and their tankers, are able to get back to base. With the USAF being only all too aware that were they to land on their bases, as an alternate, then they would become targets too.

The IAF pilots may even be able to watch the start of their Armageddon as the hoards of Iranian missiles launch in the distance, or fly over and under them, as they head to their missile launch points.

JohninMK wrote:
Were Israel to attack with their F-15/F-16 and especially the slower F-35 it seems to me likely that all the runways in Israel will be unusable before those aircraft, and their tankers, are able to get back to base. With the USAF being only all too aware that were they to land on their bases, as an alternate, then they would become targets too.

The IAF pilots may even be able to watch the start of their Armageddon as the hoards of Iranian missiles launch in the distance, or fly over and under them, as they head to their missile launch points.

1) Neither F-15/F-16 nor F-35 will fly thousands of kms in supersonic speed so they will be equally slow. I just wonder how much Iranian ADD systems have improved ... I only hope we won't have to see this ...

2) israeli Pilots can land in Jordan or Cyprus if have enough fuel.

GunshipDemocracy wrote:
1) Neither F-15/F-16 nor F-35 will fly thousands of kms in supersonic speed so they will be equally slow. I just wonder how much Iranian ADD systems have improved ... I only hope we won't have to see this ...

2) israeli Pilots can land in Jordan or Cyprus if have enough fuel.

Was it S300-PMU that Iran got? Also their own version of it. They seem to have Buk alike SAMs.

Anywhere IAF pilots land is like to have a SS missile following them in.

Announced today was another 6 Typhoons plus tanker to Akrotiri, at leasy 4 already there so must be pretty busy now.

The British Government justify flying over Syria/Iraq to attack the drones as it being part of Operation Shader, the long running anti ISIS scam. They said the RAF took over from the USAF so releasing the latter to fight drones. The USAF also brought in F-15E from Lakenheath. The USN said their Red Sea carrier aircraft were not involved, presumably as the Saudis would not allow them into their airspace to shoot down Houti missiles.

This is Ritter on a subject he knows about. This now proven capability, that we still know little about, must have rattled the Israel air force who now know a lot about. Given the very effective censorship, eat your heart out SBU, we are unlikely to ever know exactly what happened.

Scott Ritter
@RealScottRitter

Iran put five medium range ballistic missiles on target in Nevatim air base.

Nevatim is the most heavily defended spot in the world from the threat of ballistic missiles.

Defenses that were optimized to defeat Iranian missiles.

And yet five got through.

JohninMK wrote:

Was it S300-PMU that Iran got? Also their own version of it. They seem to have Buk alike SAMs.

Anywhere IAF pilots land is like to have a SS missile following them in.

Announced today was another 6 Typhoons plus tanker to Akrotiri, at leasy 4 already there so must be pretty busy now.

Iran received four S-300PMU2 batteries or something. Their Bavar-373 is their indigenous system. no idea on effectiveness but can only hope that the russians provided significant input. They make mighty claims about it like they tend to do, but then they did so about their missiles and nobody believed them until they blew different bases these past few years and now in israel so who knows. I just hope the architecture is vast and strong.

there's also the Khordad 15 which is recent enough.[/quote]

Observe the tilt, Iranian ballistic missiles using MaRV

GunshipDemocracy wrote:

JohninMK wrote:
Were Israel to attack with their F-15/F-16 and especially the slower F-35 it seems to me likely that all the runways in Israel will be unusable before those aircraft, and their tankers, are able to get back to base. With the USAF being only all too aware that were they to land on their bases, as an alternate, then they would become targets too.

The IAF pilots may even be able to watch the start of their Armageddon as the hoards of Iranian missiles launch in the distance, or fly over and under them, as they head to their missile launch points.

1) Neither F-15/F-16 nor F-35 will fly thousands of kms in supersonic speed so they will be equally slow. I just wonder how much Iranian ADD systems have improved ... I only hope we won't have to see this ...

2) israeli Pilots can land in Jordan or Cyprus if have enough fuel.

Why bothering with shooting down fighters when you can easily shoot tankers and fighters will fall down because they can't be refueled?

Interesting analysis by Armchair Warlord.

https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1780089205399650349

Let's walk through Iran's strike on Israel two days ago. What's remarkable is much of the battle occurred in plain view but officials are still telling us not to believe our lying eyes.

The strike was much smaller than claimed and largely defeated Israel's missile defenses.

I'll preface this technical analysis with a political one - the balance of power in the Middle East shifted last weekend. Israeli military primacy has been a cornerstone of the region's politics for generations. That primacy no longer exists following the grinding campaign in Gaza and this Iranian attack. Israel can bleed and its regional enemies are clearly unafraid of its fury.

Now let's figure out what happened. Israeli officials claimed to have shot down "99%" of the attack, claiming to have downed over a hundred ballistic missiles, close to two hundred drones, and thirty-plus cruise missiles with only "trivial" damage inflicted to Nevatim Airfield in the Negev. The United States and Jordan - Israeli allies - echoed these claims. Video circulating online created the impression of ballistic missiles coming in across Israel, none of which seemed to have landed.

The desert can be a strange place. There's a known phenomenon in such hot and dry conditions where people will wildly underestimate how close distant objects are to them. Israel is a small country and atmospheric conditions during the attack were extraordinarily clear, leading to a situation in which observers across the country (and in fact outside it!) filmed a single flock of missiles diving on a target deep in the Negev and reported them as separate attacks across Israel. Burning white-hot from hypersonic reentry, the warheads were effectively large meteors and visible across much of the region. This single group of warheads appears to have constituted most of the ballistics fired by Iran and was the source of most of the extant footage of incoming Iranian missiles.

Don't believe me? Good, I wouldn't expect you to. Believe the videos instead. The stills below are from five separate videos that showed a good view of the missile stream - shot from Be'er Sheva, Shomron, Jerusalem, a location in the Negev, and Amman in Jordan. All of them capture a single moment when one of the rearmost warheads sloughed off a bright piece of material as it reentered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, creating a distinctive double fireball. You can see immediately how the angle of the warhead stream changes between observers, with the observer in Amman basically looking at it from more of a rearward angle.
When the fog of war cleared there were three target areas identified as having actually been struck - the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and a site in the Golan Heights. What's quite interesting is that this group of warheads was widely - and incorrectly - reported as diving on Nevatim. It actually came in at Ramon, much further south. This can be immediately verified by comparing the frame from Be'er Sheva with those from the Jerusalem area. If this attack had struck Nevatim, observers in Be'er Sheva would have been looking straight at it and instead they saw it from much the same angle as more northernly observers.

I've prepared a graphic illustrating this - compare the angle at which observers in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Amman would have seen warheads diving on Nevatim vis-a-vis Ramon.
There's more footage out there showing multiple warheads hitting Ramon despite intense fire from anti-missile batteries (I'll post one of the videos in a reply), and it's very telling that we haven't actually gotten any satellite photos or firm announcements about damage at that base. If Nevatim was struck by ballistics at all it was by one of two warheads that attacked south of Jerusalem in a separate, smaller group from the one pictured above - the same ones, I believe, that were dramatically photographed over the Knesset.
The Israelis released a small amount of footage from Nevatim. Given the limited cratering observed at the base it's likely a cluster warhead of some kind was employed. US officials have claimed a C-130 was damaged on the ground, again suggesting something of a shotgun blast that peppered the ramp and which was not visible on the low-quality satellite photos released yesterday.
Now let's work through what else happened that night that we could observe. There was a large Grad volley from Hezbollah in Lebanon, leading to Iron Dome firing in the north of the country, and Iron Dome fired in Ashkelon for reasons unknown despite a lack of reported fire from Gaza. An Israeli corvette in Eilat harbor engaged and shot down a drone (probably launched from Yemen), and video of a single target being destroyed in outer space by an Arrow III interceptor emerged (I suspect this was also against an older ballistic missile on a lofted trajectory fired from Yemen). A small amount of debris fell, injuring a civilian in Israel and killing three in Jordan.

There were also serious reports that the Golan Heights was hit, although no footage seems to have emerged of a strike there and - significantly - no footage of highly visible incoming ballistic warheads. The Iranians subsequently came out and stated they had targeted an Israeli surveillance site in the area. There have been rumors of significant damage and a press blackout.

The IAF subsequently released a video showing them downing eight Iranian drones (of a mixture of Shahed and Ababil types), although it's unclear from the footage if they were all actually shot down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For their part, the IRGC released three videos showing their end of the attack - one showing 22 ballistics launched, one showing eleven drones flown off, and another showing 22 cruise missiles launched. Observers in Iraq posted videos of a handful of ballistics moving out, and a single drone and cruise missile were filmed en route at treetop level, but there was no evidence on the "near" side of huge ballistic volleys or drone swarms.

So what are we to make of this? Well, here's one final data point - there were no reports, and no footage, of massive Israeli air defense launches with heavy missiles before ballistics appeared in the sky over Israel. This indicates that there was little in the way of a "midcourse" interception effort before the warheads became visible during reentry - most if not all of the battle was fought during the "terminal" phase against diving warheads. And, most significantly, most of what was launched from Iran arrived over Israel and dove on targets.

That defensive fire was spirited but unsuccessful - only a small number of the warheads filmed reentering appear to have been intercepted, with multiple confirmed hits caught on camera.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

With all of this in mind - and also bearing in mind that the Iranians seem to have little appetite for another round - the obvious path forward for Netanyahu is to declare victory and go home. He can spin the results of this strike into a victory via control of a pliant Western media apparatus, an obvious offramp crafted by the Iranians and being pushed by the US. What he should not do is seek further confrontation, because the Iranians have, I believe, now proven quite decisively that they can break Israeli missile defenses.
Let's walk through Iran's strike on Israel two days ago. What's remarkable is much of the battle occurred in plain view but officials are still telling us not to believe our lying eyes.

The strike was much smaller than claimed and largely defeated Israel's missile defenses.

I'll preface this technical analysis with a political one - the balance of power in the Middle East shifted last weekend. Israeli military primacy has been a cornerstone of the region's politics for generations. That primacy no longer exists following the grinding campaign in Gaza and this Iranian attack. Israel can bleed and its regional enemies are clearly unafraid of its fury.

Now let's figure out what happened. Israeli officials claimed to have shot down "99%" of the attack, claiming to have downed over a hundred ballistic missiles, close to two hundred drones, and thirty-plus cruise missiles with only "trivial" damage inflicted to Nevatim Airfield in the Negev. The United States and Jordan - Israeli allies - echoed these claims. Video circulating online created the impression of ballistic missiles coming in across Israel, none of which seemed to have landed.

The desert can be a strange place. There's a known phenomenon in such hot and dry conditions where people will wildly underestimate how close distant objects are to them. Israel is a small country and atmospheric conditions during the attack were extraordinarily clear, leading to a situation in which observers across the country (and in fact outside it!) filmed a single flock of missiles diving on a target deep in the Negev and reported them as separate attacks across Israel. Burning white-hot from hypersonic reentry, the warheads were effectively large meteors and visible across much of the region. This single group of warheads appears to have constituted most of the ballistics fired by Iran and was the source of most of the extant footage of incoming Iranian missiles.

Don't believe me? Good, I wouldn't expect you to. Believe the videos instead. The stills below are from five separate videos that showed a good view of the missile stream - shot from Be'er Sheva, Shomron, Jerusalem, a location in the Negev, and Amman in Jordan. All of them capture a single moment when one of the rearmost warheads sloughed off a bright piece of material as it reentered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, creating a distinctive double fireball. You can see immediately how the angle of the warhead stream changes between observers, with the observer in Amman basically looking at it from more of a rearward angle.
When the fog of war cleared there were three target areas identified as having actually been struck - the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and a site in the Golan Heights. What's quite interesting is that this group of warheads was widely - and incorrectly - reported as diving on Nevatim. It actually came in at Ramon, much further south. This can be immediately verified by comparing the frame from Be'er Sheva with those from the Jerusalem area. If this attack had struck Nevatim, observers in Be'er Sheva would have been looking straight at it and instead they saw it from much the same angle as more northernly observers.

I've prepared a graphic illustrating this - compare the angle at which observers in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Amman would have seen warheads diving on Nevatim vis-a-vis Ramon.
There's more footage out there showing multiple warheads hitting Ramon despite intense fire from anti-missile batteries (I'll post one of the videos in a reply), and it's very telling that we haven't actually gotten any satellite photos or firm announcements about damage at that base. If Nevatim was struck by ballistics at all it was by one of two warheads that attacked south of Jerusalem in a separate, smaller group from the one pictured above - the same ones, I believe, that were dramatically photographed over the Knesset.
The Israelis released a small amount of footage from Nevatim. Given the limited cratering observed at the base it's likely a cluster warhead of some kind was employed. US officials have claimed a C-130 was damaged on the ground, again suggesting something of a shotgun blast that peppered the ramp and which was not visible on the low-quality satellite photos released yesterday.
Now let's work through what else happened that night that we could observe. There was a large Grad volley from Hezbollah in Lebanon, leading to Iron Dome firing in the north of the country, and Iron Dome fired in Ashkelon for reasons unknown despite a lack of reported fire from Gaza. An Israeli corvette in Eilat harbor engaged and shot down a drone (probably launched from Yemen), and video of a single target being destroyed in outer space by an Arrow III interceptor emerged (I suspect this was also against an older ballistic missile on a lofted trajectory fired from Yemen). A small amount of debris fell, injuring a civilian in Israel and killing three in Jordan.

There were also serious reports that the Golan Heights was hit, although no footage seems to have emerged of a strike there and - significantly - no footage of highly visible incoming ballistic warheads. The Iranians subsequently came out and stated they had targeted an Israeli surveillance site in the area. There have been rumors of significant damage and a press blackout.

The IAF subsequently released a video showing them downing eight Iranian drones (of a mixture of Shahed and Ababil types), although it's unclear from the footage if they were all actually shot down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For their part, the IRGC released three videos showing their end of the attack - one showing 22 ballistics launched, one showing eleven drones flown off, and another showing 22 cruise missiles launched. Observers in Iraq posted videos of a handful of ballistics moving out, and a single drone and cruise missile were filmed en route at treetop level, but there was no evidence on the "near" side of huge ballistic volleys or drone swarms.

So what are we to make of this? Well, here's one final data point - there were no reports, and no footage, of massive Israeli air defense launches with heavy missiles before ballistics appeared in the sky over Israel. This indicates that there was little in the way of a "midcourse" interception effort before the warheads became visible during reentry - most if not all of the battle was fought during the "terminal" phase against diving warheads. And, most significantly, most of what was launched from Iran arrived over Israel and dove on targets.

That defensive fire was spirited but unsuccessful - only a small number of the warheads filmed reentering appear to have been intercepted, with multiple confirmed hits caught on camera.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

With all of this in mind - and also bearing in mind that the Iranians seem to have little appetite for another round - the obvious path forward for Netanyahu is to declare victory and go home. He can spin the results of this strike into a victory via control of a pliant Western media apparatus, an obvious offramp crafted by the Iranians and being pushed by the US. What he should not do is seek further confrontation, because the Iranians have, I believe, now proven quite decisively that they can break Israeli missile defenses.
Let's walk through Iran's strike on Israel two days ago. What's remarkable is much of the battle occurred in plain view but officials are still telling us not to believe our lying eyes.

The strike was much smaller than claimed and largely defeated Israel's missile defenses.

I'll preface this technical analysis with a political one - the balance of power in the Middle East shifted last weekend. Israeli military primacy has been a cornerstone of the region's politics for generations. That primacy no longer exists following the grinding campaign in Gaza and this Iranian attack. Israel can bleed and its regional enemies are clearly unafraid of its fury.

Now let's figure out what happened. Israeli officials claimed to have shot down "99%" of the attack, claiming to have downed over a hundred ballistic missiles, close to two hundred drones, and thirty-plus cruise missiles with only "trivial" damage inflicted to Nevatim Airfield in the Negev. The United States and Jordan - Israeli allies - echoed these claims. Video circulating online created the impression of ballistic missiles coming in across Israel, none of which seemed to have landed.

The desert can be a strange place. There's a known phenomenon in such hot and dry conditions where people will wildly underestimate how close distant objects are to them. Israel is a small country and atmospheric conditions during the attack were extraordinarily clear, leading to a situation in which observers across the country (and in fact outside it!) filmed a single flock of missiles diving on a target deep in the Negev and reported them as separate attacks across Israel. Burning white-hot from hypersonic reentry, the warheads were effectively large meteors and visible across much of the region. This single group of warheads appears to have constituted most of the ballistics fired by Iran and was the source of most of the extant footage of incoming Iranian missiles.

Don't believe me? Good, I wouldn't expect you to. Believe the videos instead. The stills below are from five separate videos that showed a good view of the missile stream - shot from Be'er Sheva, Shomron, Jerusalem, a location in the Negev, and Amman in Jordan. All of them capture a single moment when one of the rearmost warheads sloughed off a bright piece of material as it reentered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, creating a distinctive double fireball. You can see immediately how the angle of the warhead stream changes between observers, with the observer in Amman basically looking at it from more of a rearward angle.
When the fog of war cleared there were three target areas identified as having actually been struck - the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and a site in the Golan Heights. What's quite interesting is that this group of warheads was widely - and incorrectly - reported as diving on Nevatim. It actually came in at Ramon, much further south. This can be immediately verified by comparing the frame from Be'er Sheva with those from the Jerusalem area. If this attack had struck Nevatim, observers in Be'er Sheva would have been looking straight at it and instead they saw it from much the same angle as more northernly observers.

I've prepared a graphic illustrating this - compare the angle at which observers in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Amman would have seen warheads diving on Nevatim vis-a-vis Ramon.
There's more footage out there showing multiple warheads hitting Ramon despite intense fire from anti-missile batteries (I'll post one of the videos in a reply), and it's very telling that we haven't actually gotten any satellite photos or firm announcements about damage at that base. If Nevatim was struck by ballistics at all it was by one of two warheads that attacked south of Jerusalem in a separate, smaller group from the one pictured above - the same ones, I believe, that were dramatically photographed over the Knesset.
The Israelis released a small amount of footage from Nevatim. Given the limited cratering observed at the base it's likely a cluster warhead of some kind was employed. US officials have claimed a C-130 was damaged on the ground, again suggesting something of a shotgun blast that peppered the ramp and which was not visible on the low-quality satellite photos released yesterday.
Now let's work through what else happened that night that we could observe. There was a large Grad volley from Hezbollah in Lebanon, leading to Iron Dome firing in the north of the country, and Iron Dome fired in Ashkelon for reasons unknown despite a lack of reported fire from Gaza. An Israeli corvette in Eilat harbor engaged and shot down a drone (probably launched from Yemen), and video of a single target being destroyed in outer space by an Arrow III interceptor emerged (I suspect this was also against an older ballistic missile on a lofted trajectory fired from Yemen). A small amount of debris fell, injuring a civilian in Israel and killing three in Jordan.

There were also serious reports that the Golan Heights was hit, although no footage seems to have emerged of a strike there and - significantly - no footage of highly visible incoming ballistic warheads. The Iranians subsequently came out and stated they had targeted an Israeli surveillance site in the area. There have been rumors of significant damage and a press blackout.

The IAF subsequently released a video showing them downing eight Iranian drones (of a mixture of Shahed and Ababil types), although it's unclear from the footage if they were all actually shot down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For their part, the IRGC released three videos showing their end of the attack - one showing 22 ballistics launched, one showing eleven drones flown off, and another showing 22 cruise missiles launched. Observers in Iraq posted videos of a handful of ballistics moving out, and a single drone and cruise missile were filmed en route at treetop level, but there was no evidence on the "near" side of huge ballistic volleys or drone swarms.

So what are we to make of this? Well, here's one final data point - there were no reports, and no footage, of massive Israeli air defense launches with heavy missiles before ballistics appeared in the sky over Israel. This indicates that there was little in the way of a "midcourse" interception effort before the warheads became visible during reentry - most if not all of the battle was fought during the "terminal" phase against diving warheads. And, most significantly, most of what was launched from Iran arrived over Israel and dove on targets.

That defensive fire was spirited but unsuccessful - only a small number of the warheads filmed reentering appear to have been intercepted, with multiple confirmed hits caught on camera.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

With all of this in mind - and also bearing in mind that the Iranians seem to have little appetite for another round - the obvious path forward for Netanyahu is to declare victory and go home. He can spin the results of this strike into a victory via control of a pliant Western media apparatus, an obvious offramp crafted by the Iranians and being pushed by the US. What he should not do is seek further confrontation, because the Iranians have, I believe, now proven quite decisively that they can break Israeli missile defenses.
Let's walk through Iran's strike on Israel two days ago. What's remarkable is much of the battle occurred in plain view but officials are still telling us not to believe our lying eyes.

The strike was much smaller than claimed and largely defeated Israel's missile defenses.

I'll preface this technical analysis with a political one - the balance of power in the Middle East shifted last weekend. Israeli military primacy has been a cornerstone of the region's politics for generations. That primacy no longer exists following the grinding campaign in Gaza and this Iranian attack. Israel can bleed and its regional enemies are clearly unafraid of its fury.

Now let's figure out what happened. Israeli officials claimed to have shot down "99%" of the attack, claiming to have downed over a hundred ballistic missiles, close to two hundred drones, and thirty-plus cruise missiles with only "trivial" damage inflicted to Nevatim Airfield in the Negev. The United States and Jordan - Israeli allies - echoed these claims. Video circulating online created the impression of ballistic missiles coming in across Israel, none of which seemed to have landed.

The desert can be a strange place. There's a known phenomenon in such hot and dry conditions where people will wildly underestimate how close distant objects are to them. Israel is a small country and atmospheric conditions during the attack were extraordinarily clear, leading to a situation in which observers across the country (and in fact outside it!) filmed a single flock of missiles diving on a target deep in the Negev and reported them as separate attacks across Israel. Burning white-hot from hypersonic reentry, the warheads were effectively large meteors and visible across much of the region. This single group of warheads appears to have constituted most of the ballistics fired by Iran and was the source of most of the extant footage of incoming Iranian missiles.

Don't believe me? Good, I wouldn't expect you to. Believe the videos instead. The stills below are from five separate videos that showed a good view of the missile stream - shot from Be'er Sheva, Shomron, Jerusalem, a location in the Negev, and Amman in Jordan. All of them capture a single moment when one of the rearmost warheads sloughed off a bright piece of material as it reentered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, creating a distinctive double fireball. You can see immediately how the angle of the warhead stream changes between observers, with the observer in Amman basically looking at it from more of a rearward angle.
When the fog of war cleared there were three target areas identified as having actually been struck - the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and a site in the Golan Heights. What's quite interesting is that this group of warheads was widely - and incorrectly - reported as diving on Nevatim. It actually came in at Ramon, much further south. This can be immediately verified by comparing the frame from Be'er Sheva with those from the Jerusalem area. If this attack had struck Nevatim, observers in Be'er Sheva would have been looking straight at it and instead they saw it from much the same angle as more northernly observers.

I've prepared a graphic illustrating this - compare the angle at which observers in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Amman would have seen warheads diving on Nevatim vis-a-vis Ramon.
There's more footage out there showing multiple warheads hitting Ramon despite intense fire from anti-missile batteries (I'll post one of the videos in a reply), and it's very telling that we haven't actually gotten any satellite photos or firm announcements about damage at that base. If Nevatim was struck by ballistics at all it was by one of two warheads that attacked south of Jerusalem in a separate, smaller group from the one pictured above - the same ones, I believe, that were dramatically photographed over the Knesset.
The Israelis released a small amount of footage from Nevatim. Given the limited cratering observed at the base it's likely a cluster warhead of some kind was employed. US officials have claimed a C-130 was damaged on the ground, again suggesting something of a shotgun blast that peppered the ramp and which was not visible on the low-quality satellite photos released yesterday.
Now let's work through what else happened that night that we could observe. There was a large Grad volley from Hezbollah in Lebanon, leading to Iron Dome firing in the north of the country, and Iron Dome fired in Ashkelon for reasons unknown despite a lack of reported fire from Gaza. An Israeli corvette in Eilat harbor engaged and shot down a drone (probably launched from Yemen), and video of a single target being destroyed in outer space by an Arrow III interceptor emerged (I suspect this was also against an older ballistic missile on a lofted trajectory fired from Yemen). A small amount of debris fell, injuring a civilian in Israel and killing three in Jordan.

There were also serious reports that the Golan Heights was hit, although no footage seems to have emerged of a strike there and - significantly - no footage of highly visible incoming ballistic warheads. The Iranians subsequently came out and stated they had targeted an Israeli surveillance site in the area. There have been rumors of significant damage and a press blackout.

The IAF subsequently released a video showing them downing eight Iranian drones (of a mixture of Shahed and Ababil types), although it's unclear from the footage if they were all actually shot down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For their part, the IRGC released three videos showing their end of the attack - one showing 22 ballistics launched, one showing eleven drones flown off, and another showing 22 cruise missiles launched. Observers in Iraq posted videos of a handful of ballistics moving out, and a single drone and cruise missile were filmed en route at treetop level, but there was no evidence on the "near" side of huge ballistic volleys or drone swarms.

So what are we to make of this? Well, here's one final data point - there were no reports, and no footage, of massive Israeli air defense launches with heavy missiles before ballistics appeared in the sky over Israel. This indicates that there was little in the way of a "midcourse" interception effort before the warheads became visible during reentry - most if not all of the battle was fought during the "terminal" phase against diving warheads. And, most significantly, most of what was launched from Iran arrived over Israel and dove on targets.

That defensive fire was spirited but unsuccessful - only a small number of the warheads filmed reentering appear to have been intercepted, with multiple confirmed hits caught on camera.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

With all of this in mind - and also bearing in mind that the Iranians seem to have little appetite for another round - the obvious path forward for Netanyahu is to declare victory and go home. He can spin the results of this strike into a victory via control of a pliant Western media apparatus, an obvious offramp crafted by the Iranians and being pushed by the US. What he should not do is seek further confrontation, because the Iranians have, I believe, now proven quite decisively that they can break Israeli missile defenses.
Let's walk through Iran's strike on Israel two days ago. What's remarkable is much of the battle occurred in plain view but officials are still telling us not to believe our lying eyes.

The strike was much smaller than claimed and largely defeated Israel's missile defenses.

I'll preface this technical analysis with a political one - the balance of power in the Middle East shifted last weekend. Israeli military primacy has been a cornerstone of the region's politics for generations. That primacy no longer exists following the grinding campaign in Gaza and this Iranian attack. Israel can bleed and its regional enemies are clearly unafraid of its fury.

Now let's figure out what happened. Israeli officials claimed to have shot down "99%" of the attack, claiming to have downed over a hundred ballistic missiles, close to two hundred drones, and thirty-plus cruise missiles with only "trivial" damage inflicted to Nevatim Airfield in the Negev. The United States and Jordan - Israeli allies - echoed these claims. Video circulating online created the impression of ballistic missiles coming in across Israel, none of which seemed to have landed.

The desert can be a strange place. There's a known phenomenon in such hot and dry conditions where people will wildly underestimate how close distant objects are to them. Israel is a small country and atmospheric conditions during the attack were extraordinarily clear, leading to a situation in which observers across the country (and in fact outside it!) filmed a single flock of missiles diving on a target deep in the Negev and reported them as separate attacks across Israel. Burning white-hot from hypersonic reentry, the warheads were effectively large meteors and visible across much of the region. This single group of warheads appears to have constituted most of the ballistics fired by Iran and was the source of most of the extant footage of incoming Iranian missiles.

Don't believe me? Good, I wouldn't expect you to. Believe the videos instead. The stills below are from five separate videos that showed a good view of the missile stream - shot from Be'er Sheva, Shomron, Jerusalem, a location in the Negev, and Amman in Jordan. All of them capture a single moment when one of the rearmost warheads sloughed off a bright piece of material as it reentered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, creating a distinctive double fireball. You can see immediately how the angle of the warhead stream changes between observers, with the observer in Amman basically looking at it from more of a rearward angle.
When the fog of war cleared there were three target areas identified as having actually been struck - the Nevatim and Ramon airbases in the Negev and a site in the Golan Heights. What's quite interesting is that this group of warheads was widely - and incorrectly - reported as diving on Nevatim. It actually came in at Ramon, much further south. This can be immediately verified by comparing the frame from Be'er Sheva with those from the Jerusalem area. If this attack had struck Nevatim, observers in Be'er Sheva would have been looking straight at it and instead they saw it from much the same angle as more northernly observers.

I've prepared a graphic illustrating this - compare the angle at which observers in Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, and Amman would have seen warheads diving on Nevatim vis-a-vis Ramon.
There's more footage out there showing multiple warheads hitting Ramon despite intense fire from anti-missile batteries (I'll post one of the videos in a reply), and it's very telling that we haven't actually gotten any satellite photos or firm announcements about damage at that base. If Nevatim was struck by ballistics at all it was by one of two warheads that attacked south of Jerusalem in a separate, smaller group from the one pictured above - the same ones, I believe, that were dramatically photographed over the Knesset.
The Israelis released a small amount of footage from Nevatim. Given the limited cratering observed at the base it's likely a cluster warhead of some kind was employed. US officials have claimed a C-130 was damaged on the ground, again suggesting something of a shotgun blast that peppered the ramp and which was not visible on the low-quality satellite photos released yesterday.
Now let's work through what else happened that night that we could observe. There was a large Grad volley from Hezbollah in Lebanon, leading to Iron Dome firing in the north of the country, and Iron Dome fired in Ashkelon for reasons unknown despite a lack of reported fire from Gaza. An Israeli corvette in Eilat harbor engaged and shot down a drone (probably launched from Yemen), and video of a single target being destroyed in outer space by an Arrow III interceptor emerged (I suspect this was also against an older ballistic missile on a lofted trajectory fired from Yemen). A small amount of debris fell, injuring a civilian in Israel and killing three in Jordan.

There were also serious reports that the Golan Heights was hit, although no footage seems to have emerged of a strike there and - significantly - no footage of highly visible incoming ballistic warheads. The Iranians subsequently came out and stated they had targeted an Israeli surveillance site in the area. There have been rumors of significant damage and a press blackout.

The IAF subsequently released a video showing them downing eight Iranian drones (of a mixture of Shahed and Ababil types), although it's unclear from the footage if they were all actually shot down. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. For their part, the IRGC released three videos showing their end of the attack - one showing 22 ballistics launched, one showing eleven drones flown off, and another showing 22 cruise missiles launched. Observers in Iraq posted videos of a handful of ballistics moving out, and a single drone and cruise missile were filmed en route at treetop level, but there was no evidence on the "near" side of huge ballistic volleys or drone swarms.

So what are we to make of this? Well, here's one final data point - there were no reports, and no footage, of massive Israeli air defense launches with heavy missiles before ballistics appeared in the sky over Israel. This indicates that there was little in the way of a "midcourse" interception effort before the warheads became visible during reentry - most if not all of the battle was fought during the "terminal" phase against diving warheads. And, most significantly, most of what was launched from Iran arrived over Israel and dove on targets.

That defensive fire was spirited but unsuccessful - only a small number of the warheads filmed reentering appear to have been intercepted, with multiple confirmed hits caught on camera.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

With all of this in mind - and also bearing in mind that the Iranians seem to have little appetite for another round - the obvious path forward for Netanyahu is to declare victory and go home. He can spin the results of this strike into a victory via control of a pliant Western media apparatus, an obvious offramp crafted by the Iranians and being pushed by the US. What he should not do is seek further confrontation, because the Iranians have, I believe, now proven quite decisively that they can break Israeli missile defenses.
Video of Iranian launches: t.me

Multi-angle video of the strike on Ramon AB: t.me

Those can be both evasive maneuvers or impact point corrections. 

Propably pre-programmed before the launch.
A "simple" S maneuver to evade last ditch SAM or AAA fire.

Nevatim is the most heavily defended spot in the world from the threat of ballistic missiles.

I doubt that.

Perhaps the only advantage that lsraeI enjoys over lran is Air Power.

It appears to me that what Iran lacks in air power it makes up for in air defence, which negates Israels advantage and now Iran has two Yak-130s which means Su-35s could be on the way too... and that would seriously change the balance.

The lsraeIi air force is small but modern, whereas lran suffers from a lack of 4th gen fighter aircraft.

For Israeli aircraft to reach Iran they would have to fly over Syria or Iraq... neither of which I suspect would be very accommodating. There was a time when Saudi Arabia would assist, but not now I don't think.

While a ground invasion of lsraeI is not possible since lran doesn't share a border with lsraeI, and both the sides lack naval vessels that can transport tanks, I noticed that lranian homegrown tanks suffer from several flaws in design, easy picking for lsraeli helos, but like I said, a ground war is unlikely.

Israel is a small target and with long range accurate missiles it would be horribly vulnerable. Iran can hit power stations and food stores and airports and shipping ports and government and military buildings... there is no need for a ground force attack to damage Israel and make life unbearable.

If they do to Israel what the US or Israel does to their enemies the situation would be rather dire for Israel.

lranian cruise missiles spend a lot of time at very high altitude, allowing PAC-3 , Iron Dome, Arrow 3 to engage them.

You are missing the point... send ballistic missiles and slow flying cruise missiles at high altitude to maximise their flight range. If the Israelis want to burn up their air defence missiles on such targets that is a win for Iran because when the next lot of missiles come they might be out of missiles.

Each missile attack the Iranians will be monitoring defences to check where missile launchers are located and where the search and tracking radars are located, etc etc.

Israel is going to run out of SAMs before Iran runs out of missiles and rockets.

Giving Iran nukes would guarantee an Israeli attack on Iran and it likely wont be against the nuclear weapons themselves but against the leadership of Iran meaning an entire Iranian city nuked...  not a good result for Iran.

easy picking for lsraeli helos

My understanding is that Iran licence produces Igla-S MANPADS... those helos would not last very long at all.

He launched Scud against Israel ! He attacked Saudi yank bases with Scud missiles .

Those extended range Scuds were horribly inaccurate so they needed chem or bio or nuke warheads to be effective. In Soviet service you would fire some to land up wind of a HATO airfield so they had to operate in NBC gear which is hot and uncomfortable but being non persistent by the time the Soviet forces got there they could operate normally.

With HE warheads they are a nuisance weapon at best.

The rockets the Iranians are using are something else... longer range and much much better accuracy.

Carrier based long range bombers , and satellite based weapons , God knows what else ! Then what ? They will close in slowly , after a month or two , then defeat . Unless Iran has nuke ICBM .

Or cut oil and gas production for 6 months to zero to ruin the western economies and make them cry... I am sure Iran could get reasonable deals on all sorts of proven combat ready Russian weapons to help them with any problems. Attacking US forces in Syria would be a great start because they only have a couple of thousand troops there and they are horribly vulnerable, so using their Syrian and Iraqi allies they could do a lot of damage by supplying MANPADS and ATGMs like licence produced Kornets and Igla-S missiles.

Why do Iranian ballistic missile warheads glow before hitting a target? There aren't enough velocities there to create plasma?

Sometimes mistakenly described as friction, but it is actually compression as the missile pushes through the air it compresses the air in front of it which can ignite.

All those munitions intercepted east of Israel had to land somewhere.

Some ballistic missiles have warheads that separate to maximise range so finding the body of a missile doesn't mean much.

Separating warheads means twice as many targets for the air defence to deal with because they likely wont be able to tell which is the warhead and which is the missile.

Israel might have hit 99% of the targets, but if they were all the rocket stages of the ballistic rockets then that is not effective air defence.

The British Government justify flying over Syria/Iraq to attack the drones as it being part of Operation Shader, the long running anti ISIS scam.

The Russians pressured Syria to not shoot down US planes or Israeli planes, but I am not so sure they would tell them not to shoot down British planes...

In fact they might give them advice and assistance because it is actually the British that are trying to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet and probably had something to do with the Nord Stream attacks too.

Iran received four S-300PMU2 batteries or something.

AFAIK they licence produce Igla-S missiles as well as Kornet ATGMs as well... I would not underestimate the Iranians, they are a clever bunch that has a lot of determination... they also take air defence seriously...

Observe the tilt, Iranian ballistic missiles using MaRV

That sort of manouver would likely not protected it because very few interceptions happen so close to the target. I would suggest it was a flight correction to get onto the point of aim, so it was more about impacting the aim point than a manouver to evade interception.

Very impressive. Have Iranian ballistic missiles reached the level of Iskander, which can also perform similar anti-ballistic maneuvers? Of course, these are MRBM missiles.

Not really. Iskander has sensors on board that can detect radar emissions from air defence systems and on active radar homing missiles, so when it detects a signal it manouvers is such a way to avoid a collision course and it releases jammers and decoys to distract the threats and it manovers in such a way that it can still turn back again and hit its target.

That video just looks like a last second course correction to hit the aim point.

The conclusions to be drawn from the evidence are clear:
- Iran launched a few dozen missiles and drones, not hundreds
- Most of the ballistics fired penetrated air defenses
- Most of the ballistics fired were targeted at Ramon AB
- Nevatim AB was a secondary rather than primary target
- The Golan site was likely struck with cruise missiles
- It is unclear if a large number of drones were even launched
- Israeli "outer-layer" defense systems (read: Arrow) may be ineffective against modern Iranian missiles attacking on depressed trajectories
- Israeli claims about the size of the attack and the success of their defensive effort should not be taken seriously
- Iranian claims about their operational goals and targets should similarly be taken with a large grain of salt, a lot of what has come out of their camp seems to be supposition and speculation

The attack was limited in scope because it was retaliation for the Israeli attack in Syria, so they didn't want or need to escalate... just respond.

They targeted the base the Israelis launched their attacks from.

If they wanted to they could have hit an enormous range of military targets and economic targets in Israel and really done some damage.

Instead they limited the number of targets and probably watched carefully at the Israeli defence response... location of launchers and radars and HQs and who radioed who and all the communications channels that were used during the attack.

This creates a list of targets to hit if they have to strike again.

If Israel strikes back then Iran will attack them with a ten times bigger attack to deter Israel from continuing to escalate...

Interesting analysis by Armchair Warlord.

You may have posted it incorrectly... some parts of the text are repeated multiple times...

he Russians were developing similar warheads already in the late 1980s. Then they developed MaRV for the R-36M2 ICBM, marked 15F178. It had much better accuracy than the standard MIRV. Before entering the atmosphere, the warhead had a small radar that compared the image with the terrain map uploaded to the warhead. After entering the atmosphere, it made corrections. After the collapse of the USSR, the tests were discontinued. Then they focused more on HGV, I think. Although Topol M also said that they had a MaRV that maneuvers after entering the atmosphere.

The first Iskander used such a sensor, but the CEP was something like 20m. The current optical system gets the CEP down to about 5m and you can use a scanned image of a satellite photo of the target that is inserted into the guidance system before launch. It flys to the location of the target and then compares what it sees with the image and manouvers to hit the aim point.

Nevatim is the most heavily defended spot in the world from the threat of ballistic missiles.

Against ballistic threats Moscow come first with the worlds only operational and properly tested ABM system that has been updated and improved since it was built.

With S-500 entering service to add to its protection its defence is only getting stronger.

The missing illustrations in Post 419 for those of us without T.me.

Or who want to read it with photos in place https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1780089205399650349