தினப்பொறி12: IMF இன் Austerity உம், அநுரா அரசின் நிவாரணமும்!

 

IMINT: Iran’s Strike on Nevatim Airbase

IMINT: Iran’s Strike on Nevatim Airbase

By Decker Eveleth    October 4, 2024

On October 1st, Iran launched another ballistic missile attack on Israel, and unlike last time, this time a large number of Iranian ballistic missile systems appear to have impacted various target areas in Israel. Here is what we know so far: Iran launched around 180 ballistic missiles, and this time they used some of their most advanced designs. Unlike the strikes in April, which appear to have been conducted mainly using older, liquid-fueled Scud derivatives like the Emad missile, Iran launched a large number of their more modern solid-fueled systems as well. My former colleague Sam Lair over at CNS has been going around looking at Iranian missile bases for evidence of launches, and so far we know that Iran launched solid-fueled missiles from several bases including Tabriz and liquid-fueled missiles from their missile base in Shiraz. The targets, according to Iran, included various Israeli air defense radar installations, two airbases (Nevatim Airbase and Tel Nof Airbase) and Mossad headquarters in Glilot. Of these it seems the strike on Mossad headquarters in Glilot was the least successful. We only saw two impacts, and the one impact that landed even remotely near the headquarters building did so about 520 meters away from the building itself.

The strikes at Tel Nof and Nevatim seem to have been much more successful. We don’t have imagery of Tel Nof yet, but there is social media footage of warheads raining down on the base, and some seemed to have caused secondary explosions, which is good evidence that they likely hit something worth hitting. As soon as we have imagery of Tel Nof myself and the crew at CNS will start counting.

We got some high resolution imagery of one of the targets, Nevatim Air Base, that our friends at Planet Labs snapped on October 2nd. Its worth talking about the imagery at length. Yesterday Jeffrey, his crew over at CNS, and myself conducted a battle damage assessment on Nevatim Air Base, and we count at least 33 likely impact craters, with likely more impacts currently obscured by clouds. It may shake down that Iran hit the base with something like 40 warheads. Big shout out to Sam Lair, Michael Duitsman, and the rest of the crew for doing some good geospatial work on this problem.

Here’s the image Jeffrey posted. Before going further it’s worth pausing on this for a moment. Last time Iran tried to hit Nevatim back in April, they only got 5 warheads through, and those warheads were pretty spread out and didn’t hit much of interest. I had an argument with Jeffrey at the time about what sort of target points they would be aiming at. Jeffrey, under the reasonable assumption that the liquid-fueled missiles like Emad that Iran uses aren’t that accurate (an assessment I think I agree with) made the argument that likely Iran aimed a single target point. I disagreed with him at the time about the number of target points, and the slightly clustering effect here seems to support the tentative conclusion that Iran probably aimed at multiple points. There is a slight clustering effect at several important targets, like the airborne refueling aircraft hangars and the F-35 shelters. But more data is needed to come to a specific conclusion. It’s possible that Iran aimed at a single aim point back in April, but this time had multiple aim points because they were using different missiles. Iran used more modern systems for this strike – they appear to have used their latest Fattah and Kheibar Shekan missiles, which are solid-fuel and have maneuvering warheads. The Fattah is especially sophisticated as it has a powered warhead. There are some people attempting to use this analysis to claim that Iranian missiles have an accuracy of 500 meters, and I would hold off on that given how much we don’t know about what they targeted.

Another important thing to note is that airbases are really hard targets. The vast majority of an airbase is empty land and most of the things you probably wanna hit are pretty spread out. The Russians didn’t have all that much luck hitting Ukrainian airbases for much the same reason. In order to be very effective at destroying aircraft, you have to be very, very precise, and most missiles simply don’t have that accuracy.

So what did they hit? Well, not much. Most of the impact zones either missed entirely or simply hit the taxiways around the base, most of which has now been repaired. They did score some hits on one refueling aircraft hangar and a couple buildings.

There’s a slight cluster effect in this area where Israeli stores a large number of aircraft unprotected, which again may be an indication that Iran aimed at this area specifically, or Iran simply got very lucky that they had such good cluster in such a high value area.

One support building at the south end of the base took a hit from a missile, but the hit wasn’t centered on the building, and only part of the building was destroyed.

Lastly, the 3 meter imagery shows likely serious damage to a building on the eastern side of the base, likely used for something like maintenance. The damage to those three structures are the most obvious pieces of serious damage Iran’s strike inflicted. From there we move on to the F-35 shelters, which appear to have mainly weathered the storm.

Two near misses here, with impact craters apparent on either side of one of the rows of F-35 shelters. A third hit a little further away off the image. Should demonstrate that the lack of serious damage to the facilities here at Nevatim was as much luck as it was due to the relative inaccuracy of Iranian missiles.

Jeffrey pointed out that one of the F-35 shelters does appear to have sustained some damage, perhaps even a direct hit. There’s what might be a small hole in the roof of the shelter, and a large amount of concrete dust on the roof. But the shelter itself seems to still be intact. It could either be that the warhead that landed here was a dud and didn’t explode or Israeli aircraft shelter construction techniques contain explosions really well. It is notable that this shelter still has its doors closed, unlike most of the other shelters, possibly because its damaged and not in use.

The rest of the impacts did not hit much of anything, and many landed further down the runway. A friend is working on a theory as to why this is that I will talk about next time when its a little fleshed out.

So what does all this tell us? There’s still a lot we don’t know about the overall strike, but I think some data can be pulled from this. We cannot state much about the overall effectiveness of Israeli air defense. We know Israel launched a large number of interceptors, and we can see footage of those interceptors intercepting SOMETHING beyond the atmosphere, but we don’t know how effective they were as a whole system. But the fact remains that over 30 missiles impacted Nevatim, and I don’t think that’s because Israel did not intercept missiles they thought were going to miss. As the imagery of the F-35 shelters show, many of the misses here at Nevatim were only meters away from something worth hitting, and it seems unlikely that Israel can determine the impact points of maneuvering missiles while they are still traveling through the mid-course down to 5 meters.

We also don’t know much about the specific capabilities Iranian missiles have at maneuvering to defeat Israeli missile defense. Perhaps some of the Iranian missiles did manage to bamboozle Israel’s missile defense grid, but without hard data on that, there’s not much we can say.

We also don’t know why Nevatim was hit much harder than Glilot. It’s possible that Israel prioritized intercepting missiles heading for Glilot as Glilot is within an urban area. This if true lends credence to the idea that Israel was either genuinely overwhelmed by missiles, or they simply chose to conserve their interceptors for another day. Both may be true.

Regardless of which may be true or truer than the other, the core fact remains that Iran has proven it can hit Israel hard if it so chose. Airbases are hard targets, and the sort of target that likely won’t produce many casualties. Iran could choose a different target – say, a densely packed IDF ground forces base, or a target within a civilian area – and a missile strike there would produce a large number of causalities.

There’s also the long term conflict problem Israel has now. Interceptors are more expensive than ballistic missiles, and Iran is dramatically expanding their production facilities for ballistic missiles at all three sites they produce missiles at. The disparity between the rate at which Israel can produce interceptors and the rate at which Iran can produce ballistic missiles will likely swing in Iran’s favor, which suggests that Iran could, in a longer missile campaign or a protracted war, simply continually spit missiles at Israel until Israel does not have any interceptors left.

This has always been the enduring problem with missile defense – once you build up a defensive shield and identify the number of missiles you want to intercept, your adversary is going to simply build more missiles. I’ve been convinced that theater missile defense generates off-ramps in conflicts, but this argument only works in conflicts where the actors CAN back away, which is why I still think the argument doesn’t really work at the nuclear strategic level. It also depends on the personality in question at the head of a state wanting to take an off-ramp, and unfortunately, we’re talking about Israel here.

So despite the mockery of Iran’s missile accuracy, my personal takeaway is the opposite of what people seem to be concluding about this whole episode: Iran has proven that its missiles are effective and that they can indeed hurt Israel. No one should be fooled that Iranian missile accuracy (or lack thereof) means the Iranian missile force is some sort of paper tiger. A different target would produce different results. Whether or not Israel will feel deterred by this revelation is another story that depends on the Israeli domestic political climate and the personalities within the Israeli government. Given that Israel seems to have already publicly committed to striking Iran, this is likely not the last time we will see exchanges of missiles. My concern is that this will be, in the long term, an exchange that Israel won’t be able to afford to make if this becomes a protracted conflict⍐.

Iranian missiles hit Israeli military sites

Satellite © Planet Labs 2024

Iranian missiles hit Israeli military sites, visuals show

Some missiles broke through air defenses to strike or land near at least three Israeli military and intelligence installations.

By Meg Kelly, Imogen Piper and Evan Hill

October 4, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles broke through Israeli and allied air defenses on Tuesday night, striking or landing near at least three military and intelligence installations, according to a review of videos and photos of the attack and aftermath.

Videos verified by The Washington Post showed 20 missiles striking the Nevatim air base, in the southern Negev desert, and three striking the Tel Nof base, in central Israel. Analysts told The Post the visuals were consistent with direct impacts on the bases rather than debris from intercepted missiles. Other videos showed that at least two missiles landed near Tel Aviv in Cinema City Glilot, Hod Hasharon, close to Israel’s Mossad spy agency headquarters, leaving at least two craters.

People take shelter in central Israel on Tuesday. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

The findings raise questions about the full scope of the damage to Israeli military bases and suggest that Iran was more successful in evading Israel’s defenses than in April, when only two munitions eluded air defenses and impacted Israel, according to Post reporting.

The Israeli military said air defense systems identified 180 missiles fired from Iran but did not respond to questions about the number of locations affected by the strikes. The United States and Israel have said that there was minimal damage on the ground, and the Israeli military said Wednesday that its bases were fully operational.

The Pentagon declined to comment on The Post’s findings. The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.

A man holds children as people take cover in central Israel on Tuesday. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

Three videos synchronized by The Post show a cascade of missiles streaking toward Nevatim air base. A bright flash is seen midair where an Israeli interceptor appears to stop an incoming missile. Fireballs and plumes of smoke rise above the horizon in at least 20 locations where missiles struck the ground, according to a Post analysis of the 30-second videos, which begin after the missiles are in the sky.

“The further away the missile is launched, the greater the margin of error,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. He added that when Iran previously launched missiles at Nevatim air base in April, half fell within three-quarters of a mile of the base and half fell outside that radius, according to his team’s calculations.

 

The Israeli military has two missile defense systems — Arrow II and Arrow III — that are designed to defend against long-range ballistic missiles like those used by Iran in Tuesday’s attack. Arrow II works after the missile has entered the final phase of its flight, inside the atmosphere, while Arrow III aims to intercept missiles still in space, said Fabian Hinz, an Iran analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Berlin who follows the missile program closely.

Medium-resolution satellite imagery collected by Planet Labs on Wednesday shows what appears to be at least one destroyed building at Nevatim. A high-resolution image of another part of the base shows a large hole in the roof of an aircraft hangar and several impact craters.

Lewis said his team counted 32 strikes on Nevatim alone.

Israeli rescue force members inspect the site where a missile fired from Iran hit a school
building in central Israel on Tuesday. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

North of the Nevatim air base, a video filmed on the balcony of the Hilton hotel in Tel Aviv shows two missiles speeding through the sky from the east toward Cinema City Glilot, Hod Hasharon, close to Mossad headquarters. One hits the ground, emitting a large flash of light. The other falls into the sea.

A video filmed in the immediate aftermath and published to social media on Tuesday shows a sprawling crater in the middle of a highway, stopping traffic completely. The vehicles closest to the impact are coated in a thin layer of dirt. Some appear to have had their windows blown out.

The missile hit the median of the highway, creating a crater that appears to be roughly 20 feet wide and more than a dozen feet deep, an analysis of video shows. A Post journalist saw a second crater on the same highway.

It was not immediately clear what kind of missiles were used in the attack.

Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency reported that Ghadr and Emad missiles were used, adding that 90 percent of the missiles hit their targets. The Ghadr and Emad are among the longest-range missiles in Iran’s arsenal. Iran also said it used a Fattah-1 missile for the first time, which it has said can maneuver at high speeds to avoid interceptors.

Another video, first geolocated by open-source researchers and independently confirmed by The Post, shows multiple towers of smoke floating above the horizon line from another barrage of missiles that struck the Tel Nof air base. Bright flashes following a missile impact appear to be a secondary explosion.

A crater is visible on the grounds of a school not far from the base in Gedera, video published to X and confirmed by The Post shows. The school’s wall has pulled away, exposing empty classrooms inside⍐.

Adam Taylor, Missy Ryan, Jarrett Ley and Nilo Tabrizy contributed to this report.