Over the weekend, for the first time in Iran's history, drones and missiles were launched from the territory of Iran into Israel. As the news from all sides has been exposed, the more accurate news is that Iran has launched hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, at least 9 missiles hit two important Israeli air bases, damaged a C-130 transport plane, an airport runway, and multiple storage facilities.
Iran launched a large-scale attack on Israel, and tensions between the two countries escalated suddenly
Israel and the United States are "mouth-to-mouth kings", claiming that the interception rate is as high as 99%. There are also Israeli officials who say that Tel Aviv has dealt a heavy blow to Iran with highly effective air defense systems. However, Iran's night attack is still an excellent sample for a long-distance breakthrough of the strongest "air defense system" of the United States and the West, and it has a strong reference value for any country that may have similar "needs" in the future.
First of all, it is an objective fact that the Israeli air defense system is strong. Not only do they have their own "Iron Dome" short-range, "David's Sling" medium-range and "Arrow" long-range air defense systems, supplemented by the "Patriot" air defense system as a mobile force, but also US warships and fighter jets in the Mediterranean and Red Seas are said to have helped intercept a number of Iranian drones. So, how did the Iranian side manage to penetrate Israel's nested air defense network?
Iran started fighting, and 100 drones took the lead in attacking
From the analysis of the attack process, Iran first launched hundreds of drones from the mainland, and then drones were launched from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and other "Arc of Resistance" member countries, and after a few hours, dozens of ballistic missiles were lifted into the air, and finally hypersonic missiles. This style of play is obviously coordinated in advance and is quite targeted.
The distance between Iran and Israel is almost 1,700 kilometers, and the range of drones is sufficient, but the speed is slow, and it takes several hours to complete the flight, while the speed of ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles is much faster, and they can fly above the Israeli army in ten minutes, or even within a few minutes.
The Iranian-backed "Arc of Resistance" has also joined the operation
From Israel's point of view, the scene they saw was that Iran's drones and missiles were killed almost simultaneously, and this presented a difficult problem to the Israeli air defense forces: Who should they intercept? In terms of the difficulty of interception, suicide drones are slow, and US fighter planes and Israeli air defense systems can easily handle them, but drone swarms and ballistic missiles have always been a "world-class problem" in air defense operations.
The end result is that the vast majority of Iranian drones are intercepted, and the ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles that hide behind them effectively hit the target. First of all, the interception rate of air defense operations is already very low; taking the "Patriot 3" as an example, the data released by the Pentagon itself shows that during the Second Gulf War, the interception rate of the "Patriot 3" was less than 40 percent, and it could only rely on quantity to make up for its efficiency and intercept one target with multiple missiles.
Hundreds of drones were intercepted
A more recent case is that in May 2023, the Russian army attacked Kyiv, the "Dagger" hypersonic missile and the "Patriot" air defense system duel, the tactics adopted by the Russian army are multiple rounds of attacks + decoy bombs, inducing the Ukrainian army to empty more than 30 "Patriot" missiles in 2 minutes, and the weapon with a unit price of 5 million US dollars has the effect of a bazooka. In the end, the "Dagger" hypersonic missile, which was hiding behind, closed its throat with a sword, and the "Patriot" air defense system was damaged, after which Ukraine no longer dared to advertise the invincibility of their air defense system.
It can be seen that even if the Israeli air defense system has more missiles and can shoot more missiles, it can only stop the first wave of attacks, and when the Iranian follow-up troops arrive, the Israeli air defense system will not be able to react at all. In this case, the Israeli army also consumed $1 billion worth of air defense missiles at one time in the current round of air defense operations. You can think about what would have been blown up in Israel if Iran had not exercised "restraint" and fired not hundreds, but thousands of missiles.
Iranian "Khorramshahr-4" long-range ballistic missile
Obviously, Iran's military operation is an attack tactic that has been developed after a long period of and thorough research, and it has proved that even with the addition of British and American warships and aircraft, the United States and the West, which claim to be the strongest "air defense system" in the world, are far from perfect. By the way, the Iranian side also claimed that they successfully paralyzed part of Israel's "Iron Dome" air defense system with a cyber attack in advance, and we do not know whether these hackers were provided by a northern netizen.
In short, in the potential military struggle in the future, the need for "penetrating the enemy's powerful air defense system" will definitely appear frequently, such as striking US aircraft carriers or something, you know everything, now it is Iran to sum up the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and hand over a fairly good answer sheet, and this night attack will definitely become a key research topic for other military powers for a long time in the future.