EXCERPT FROM AN EMAIL WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST FROM A FRIEND ASKING FOR HIS ASTUTE ANALYSIS OF IRAN’S DRONE AND MISSILE ATTACK ON ISRAEL.
Theodore Postol is Professor of Science, Know-how and Nationwide Safety Coverage within the Program in Science, Know-how, and Society at MIT.
I apologize for not getting again to you sooner with solutions to your questions. I’ve been spending time looking for any video information from the Iranian assaults on Israel that may be informative.
I’ve connected three video clips derived from among the sources I discovered and have put them collectively in a approach that may hopefully be useful to you and your colleagues.
The primary of those video clips is titled:
Actual-Time & Slo Mo of Uncooked Video Clip of April 14, 2024 Iran Assault On Israel In Umm Al-Fahm P33_480_.mp4 (3.4 MB)
This clip exhibits two long-range Iranian missiles passing via the environment, impacting, and exploding in Israel. The incoming missiles are brilliant spots within the video as a result of they’re touring at a excessive sufficient pace (Mach 10 to 13) to be incandescent from atmospheric heating. For now, I’ll solely offer you a number of essential highlights, however there may be much more that may be derived from this specific video.
The video is lower into 4 sections.
The primary part is solely the video because it seems in actual time. The time-sequence is roughly 13 seconds lengthy. The soundtrack has 4 sharp appears like “gunfire,” that are merely the sounds from the ground-explosions delayed in time because of the pace of sound being a lot slower than the pace of sunshine. Word that you would be able to see solely two ground-explosions, however the sound signifies there are two extra ground-explosions that occurred exterior the field-of-view of the digicam.
The second part is solely the primary part repeated at one third pace, so you might have a greater probability of observing particulars.
The next two sections are merely a repeat of part 1 and part 2.
There are a lot of different movies of unengaged ballistic missiles arriving, however all of them lower off earlier than the warheads attain the bottom. That is virtually definitely resulting from Israeli classification guidelines that don’t permit the press to publish movies of ground-explosions.
The second video clip titled:
Harm to Israeli Air Base In April 14, 2023 Iran Attack_480_.mp4 (2.8 MB)
This clip exhibits among the floor harm at one of many two Israeli airbases that have been the direct targets of those ballistic missile assaults. The primary sequence exhibits a crater that was most likely from a 200 to 400 kilogram explosive warhead. There are additionally pictures of decrease ranges of injury and smaller craters which will presumably be from drones that weren’t intercepted. The drones are recognized to have 50 kg warheads and would thereby produce a lot decrease ranges of floor harm and smaller craters.
A really fascinating part of the video exhibits the Israelis repairing a runway, which will need to have been hit by a munition, requiring that the airbase to shortly fill within the crater and canopy it with fast-annealing concrete.
All army airports have this functionality as it’s anticipated that runways will likely be attacked in order to restrict the power for the airbase to deal with fight plane for taking off and touchdown.
The final 10 seconds of the video exhibits a ballistic missile arriving, and no interceptors within the air making an attempt to interact it. If you happen to look rigorously on the darkish sky instantly above the constructing the warhead passes behind, it’s best to have the ability to see a number of faint flashes within the sky. These faint flashes are indications of intense gentle from a floor explosion that’s being mirrored by particles within the sky.
The third video titled:
Israeli Drone Shootdowns on April 14, 2024 (Regular and Slo Mo-P35)240.mp4 (1.1 MB)
This video exhibits plane “gun digicam” photos of drones and cruise missiles which are being shot down with air-to-air missiles.
The gun digicam photos present cruise missiles:
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and drones:
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The cruise missiles journey at a pace of roughly 500 to 600 km/h whereas the drones journey at a a lot slower pace, about 220 to 250 km/h.
The movies present an especially essential truth.
The entire targets, whether or not drones or not, are shot down by air-to-air missiles.
The workhorse air-to-air missile of the US Air Pressure is a AIM-9x Sidewinder.
The price of a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is about $500,000.
The price of a drone is maybe 10,000 or $20,000, and the price of an Iranian cruise missile might be about $100,000.
A particularly essential truth launched by the Israeli authorities is that the price of defending Israel from this specific Iranian assault was about $1.3 billion!
The implications of this single quantity are substantial.
This means that the price of defending from waves of assaults of this sort could be very more likely to be unsustainable towards an adequately armed and decided adversary.
The precise scale of the assault is summarized based on CNN within the picture beneath:
The clear and unambiguous proof from all the movies of ballistic missiles arriving over Israel present that Iron Dome interceptors have been primarily not utilized in any makes an attempt to interact the ballistic missiles.
The choice to not even attempt to have interaction the long-range Iranian ballistic missiles is totally sound.
The Iron Dome interceptor would have an excellent probability of intercepting both a cruise missile or a drone that had leaked via the very substantial plane applied air-defense system.
This virtually definitely signifies that the majority of the $1.3 billion value of the protection was virtually definitely expended on capturing down drones and cruise missiles with fighter plane launching air-to-air missiles towards targets.
Since there may be primarily no proof of long-range ballistic missiles being engaged by Iron Dome, it might solely imply that they weren’t engaged in any respect, or there have been makes an attempt to interact them with the Arrow and David’s sling protection methods.
The truth that a really massive variety of unengaged ballistic missiles could possibly be seen glowing as they reenter the environment to decrease altitudes, signifies that regardless of the results of David’s Sling and the Arrow missile defenses, they weren’t particularly efficient.
Thus, the proof at this level exhibits that primarily all or many of the arriving long-range ballistic missiles weren’t intercepted by any of the Israeli air and missile-defense methods.
A further remark that’s related to the scenario of Israel relative to South Korea is illustrated within the two maps beneath:
The maps point out that the drones and cruise missiles needed to journey distances of 1300 to 1500 km from Iran to Israel, and roughly 2000 km from Yemen to Israel.
This transit requires many hours permitting for fighter plane to interact drones and cruise missiles. There at the moment are stories that the US Navy offered airborne warning and management methods (AWACS, particularly, Navy E-2 Hawkeyes)) which have been extraordinarily efficient in vectoring fighter plane to targets that they might then shortly purchase and destroy.
Such a possibility could be way more restricted within the case of comparable forms of mass assaults from North Korea towards South Korea. AWACS will definitely be tremendously useful within the case of defending South Korea from this sort of assault, however the engagement-rate limitations of fight plane towards very massive numbers of drones and cruise missiles would make the effectiveness of this type of combat-air protection a lot decrease than was the case for the Israeli protection towards Iran.
One other very significant issue that analysts might want to think about is that commercially accessible know-how is now adequate for developing cruise missiles and drones which have restricted however usefull capabilities to “acknowledge” their targets and residential on them.
On September 14, 2019 Iranian produced cruise missiles have been used to assault the Abqaiq Oil Facility in Saudi Arabia. The character of the harm to the power indicated that the cruise missiles had an efficient accuracy of maybe a number of toes, way more exact than could possibly be achieved with GPS steering.
I’ve analyzed the scenario, and have concluded that commercially accessible optical and computational know-how is greater than able to being tailored to a cruise missile steering system to provide it very excessive precision homing functionality. The proof of this conclusion is within the satellite tv for pc {photograph} beneath:
as will be seen from this satellite tv for pc picture produced by the corporate Digital Globe and paid for and launched by the US authorities. It exhibits that 4 cruise missiles struck 4 oil processing tanks at Abqaiq at primarily the identical level on every of the tanks. Such precision couldn’t presumably be achieved with GPS steering alone.
With a purpose to persuade myself that my conclusion that the optical homing could possibly be finished with nothing greater than satellite tv for pc information, I stimulated the homing course of by taking the satellite tv for pc picture of a single remoted oil processing tank,
I then carried out a widely known process known as “picture cross-correlation” on the unique satellite tv for pc photos of the tanks.
The correlation “features” that have been produced by this quite simple laptop experiment are proven beneath,
And the outcomes are projected onto an precise satellite tv for pc {photograph} of the tanks, exhibiting that the correlation methodology gives very excessive precision in figuring out the central location on a tank that’s to be hit.
For the reason that optical and computational methods wanted to carry out these correlations in near-real-time on a homing missile are nicely throughout the capabilities of business cameras and laptop chips (NVidia chips are nicely as much as the job), it’s my conclusion that the Iranians have already developed precision guided cruise missiles and drones.
The implications of this are clear.
The price of capturing down cruise missiles and drones will likely be very excessive and may nicely be unsustainable until extraordinarily cheap and efficient anti-air methods will be applied.
It’s definitely potential to shoot down drones and cruise missiles with antiaircraft weapons, though these methods will likely be of restricted vary and can have to be comparatively near targets they’re defending.
At the moment, nobody has demonstrated an economical protection system that may intercept ballistic missiles with any reliability. Up to now, even Iron Dome has been a failure towards artillery rockets, that are of fairly brief vary and are of fairly easy and cheap.
The Israelis declare an outrageous value per Iron Dome interceptor of between $60,000 and $80,000 an interceptor. It appears that evidently this declare should be unfaithful.
Equally refined interceptors, whether or not they’re the Javelin antitank missile, which prices about $200,000 every or the AIM-9x air-to-air missile are tremendously dearer.
The Israelis Iron Dome system has been to an excellent first approximation fully funded by the US authorities. Any consideration for buying the system should be accompanied by proof it might work in fight and by correct value estimates of the completely different elements.
Solely then ought to any consideration be given as to whether or not buy Iron Dome.
I’ve much more I can say about these points, however I worry I’ve most likely already overwhelmed you with particulars that increase many extra questions that I’m not positive I can reply.
These individuals who advocate shopping for these lively defenses ought to be requested to offer information that exhibits what I’ve collected herein and elsewhere just isn’t supported by the information.
Anybody who advocates a protection method for his or her nation ought to have the ability to present that they’ve a totally reasoned argument, which incorporates details about the effectiveness of the technique and its affordability.
Wishful pondering, like what has occurred in Ukraine, will at finest be a recipe for great expenditures for little functionality.
I might welcome to listen to the arguments of those that need to make such purchases. I’m open to studying and to acquiring information that might lead me to a special conclusion.
