this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
94 points (96.1% liked)
World News
32501 readers
535 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Iran really should be preemptively striking Israel; I mean Israel is literally drawing up invasion plans.
The problem (aside from international relations nonsense) is that Iran's air force and missiles won't be able to inflict significant damage on Israel, which aside from the Iron dome has the strongest air force in the region.
We already saw that the dome cannot intercept Iranian missiles just days ago. Also, the math doesn't work in favor of the dome given that they need 2 interceptors per missile. There's also the issue of production capacity. Once it runs through the existing stockpiles of interceptors, making new ones at the rate they’re being consumed is not possible. For example, from 2008 to present, Lockheed Martin was able to produce 800 missiles, around 50 a year. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2023/lockheed-martin-announces-delivery-of-800th-thaad-interceptor-missile-system
To counter the 180 missiles Iran reportedly launched, requiring up to 2 interceptors each, would have exhausted nearly HALF of all THAAD missiles ever produced. And that’s assuming there are enough launchers to even fire that many interceptors at once. The US is completely unprepared for the scale of war it is provoking around the globe.
Iran can absolutely cripple Israel by destroying its energy infrastructure.
I see. I assumed they could be intercepted by the iron dome as usual, but if not that changes things.
The key thing is that even if the iron dome was capable of reliably intercepting ballistic missiles, the math is always going to be in favor of the attacker.