Did Iran Actually Defend Itself?

[DWReese]

Outside of the ballistic missiles and drones that Iran fired at Israel, are there any confirmed reports that Iran defended itself while under attack?

Were there any air-to-air battles being reported?

Were there any Israeli planes shot down by SAMs?

From the news accounts, it appears that Iran put up almost no fight to defend itself. I'm sure that there is more to the story than what is being reported, or not being reported, as the case may be.

It would be interesting to know if the S-300 or that Bavar-373 was used in battle and, if so, what did they shoot at, and how successful were they? For game purposes, this information is critical.

It would seem that either Israel previously took out all of the Iranian radars, completely restricting the use of the defensive weaponry, or that Iran merely did next to nothing to defend itself. You would think, if nothing else, that Iranian planes would have immediately responded when the Iranian airspace was being violated and, even if they weren't very successful, you would think that you would see the wreckage of downed Iranian planes, other than those of the planes simply burning on the tarmac. Perhaps they did respond, but nothing has been reported about any air-to-air battles.

Anyone know of any site reporting any of this? Certainly, it has to be of interest to some.

[HalfLifeExpert]

It's too early to say. We're still only a little more than a week into this campaign.

With military operations in the modern era, reports this early are not reliable and I suspect we will not get better information for some time.

That said, the claims are that the Israelis pulled off a first strike somewhat akin to the opening attacks of Operation Desert Storm, in that they struck in such a way that crippled Iranian Command & Control systems along with AD systems.

If true, and if very successful, that would explain lack of (admitted) Israeli losses. It's possible that the Iranians got some sorties up and that they were dealt with by F-15I escorts.

Some claims are that the Mossad led attacks from within Iran primarily targeted Air Defense equipment and ballistic missiles. We should also assume that there were probably some cyberattacks as well.

Again, it's far too early for us in the general public to know much for certain, but these initial reports indicate to me that the Israelis pulled off a very impressive opening series of attacks that crippled a top-heavy Command infrastructure.

[SunlitZelkova]

As HalfLifeExpert said, it is too early too know.

It isn't even clear what the status of Iran's ballistic missile arsenal is. One side claims the recent attacks on Israel have involved a small number of missiles because the IAF has destroyed many launchers and has air superiority over Western Iran, the other side claims that the continuous nature of the attacks mean that Israel lacks air superiority and Iran is simply conserving ammunition while wearing down Israeli-US BMD.

[HalfLifeExpert]

Launching a more drawn out missile campaign rather than a mass surge might make sense only in the idea of wearing down US-Israeli ABM munitions, but frankly I was kind of surprised at how long it took for the Iranians to start firing them in response to the start of Rising Lion.

I would have thought that since this operation has been anticipated in some form for almost 20 years, the Iranian Ballistic missile forces would have a pre-arranged contingency plan for immediate launches in the event of a massive Israeli attack (as opposed to the small raid several months ago). I'd think that a certain simple coded message would get all the intact and active missile sites to start firing ASAP.

Maybe there was such a procedure, but the Israeli strike really did cripple the ability to issue those orders.

Or maybe there was no such procedure and the Iranian command leadership really is so top-heavy that they are vulnerable to decapitating strikes, like Saddam in 1991.

You'd think that everyone would have learned that lesson over 30 years ago, but then again, authoritarian regimes do tend to get paranoid about control over their armed forces.

[SunlitZelkova]

The only militaries I have seen discussed as having taken strong lessons from the Gulf War are China and North Korea. The former did its huge modernization program, the latter just raced to nukes as fast as possible and adopted a doctrine for their use designed to exploit American vulnerabilities displayed during the Gulf War. Every other non-Western military... not so much. Look at what happened to Assad's forces, and at least one US Army official has characterized the war in Ukraine as a "big Soviet army vs. a little one."

Iran's response appears to have been heavily influenced by political factors. One of the reasons they probably did not attack Dimona, despite literally having trained to do so in exercises a couple years back (launching missiles at a mockup of the complex), is that they are trying to take advantage of the NPT and Geneva Convention outlawing attacks on nuclear facilities. They can now withdraw from the NPT and build nuclear weapons (in theory) without looking like a rogue state, because the laws that were supposed to convince them to not build nukes were broken by the other guys.