The Shahed Factory
Iranian Attack On Israel Explained
Yesterday evening Iran sent a combination of more than 300 kamikaze drones and missiles towards Israel. Almost all of them where intercepted by a joint force of US, UK, Israeli aircraft, ships and ground based air defenses. The barrage only produced 1 casualty so far, a 10 year old kid.
Air Defenses
An air defense system is an amazing thing to have, but they all have one glaring weakness and everyone knows about it, physics. How many targets can you track and how many interceptors/ammunition you got? You can only intercept so many targets at a time. It’s why nuclear deterrence still works in 2024, a good portion of your nukes will inevitably get intercepted but as long as a few get through you’re successful. According to US Central Command, Iran has around 3000 various missiles in it’s inventory and an unknown number of loitering munitions (suicide drones, e.g. Shahed 136). They shot over 120 ballistic missiles at Israel around 4% of their known inventory and around 170 drones, not significant but not nothing. Without warning, this attack could of maybe overwhelmed Israel’s defenses allowing more missiles and drones to get through but that was not the goal.
Rationality
Despite what you hear on TV and social media, the regime in Iran is not crazy they’re very rational actors. When you’re a rational actor, you understand that things take a long time to build and a huge war can destroy everything you ever worked for. Knowing that, you put limits around all of your actions to avoid catastrophic mistakes. Look at how Iran handled this situation, their general got killed in Syria and they saber rattled all over the news and social media for 2 weeks before they launched their attack. “We’re going to attack” “We’re going to make you pay”. The public doesn’t understand this kind of talk so they conjured up all sorts of conspiracies about World War 3 on social media. I understood it but even I was guilty of saying “stop talking get on with it already”, so I can sympathize with the average citizen being spooked.