Israel's air defences buckle under powerful new Iranian missile barrage

Telegraph

9 hours ago

Like a 'bus full of explosives' ready to smash into an Israeli city.
That was how Benjamin Netanyahu described Iran's ballistic missiles before they were launched at his country at the weekend.
Tehran has now fired more than 200 at Israel since Friday, according to Israeli military officials.
Many have penetrated Israel's renowned air defences, forcing the military to warn its people that the defences were 'not hermetic'.
Scenes of devastation on the streets of Tel Aviv have prompted alarm over what some believed to be the impenetrable layers of protection over Israel, including the Iron Dome.
Where did they hit?
At least 13 people, all identified as civilians, have been killed since Tehran started its long-range barrages late on Friday.
Missiles killed four people, all women and children, in northern Israel between Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to the local police force.
Another four were killed and dozens more wounded when a multi-storey building was hit in Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv.
Pictures of the search and rescue efforts revealed the extent of the damage, with the one side of the building almost entirely shaved off as a result of the strike.
Scenes of hulking piles of concrete debris and protruding rebar steel have been compared to Gaza.
But it appears that the initial targets were not solely civilian areas.
Footage circulated during Friday night's Iranian barrage showed missiles landing in and around the Kirya compound, which belongs to the Israeli ministry of defence and is know as Israel's Pentagon, in Tel Aviv.
What is not clear is whether the missiles landed inside the facility or in the civilian areas surrounding it.
But soldiers have been amongst the hundreds of people confirmed injured by Israeli authorities.
However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDG) described the strikes on Tel Aviv on Friday as an attack on civilians, rather than detailing any potential damage to its compound.
On Sunday, Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesman, said: 'Iran is intentionally firing missiles at Israeli homes and apartments. These aren't misfires – they are deliberately targeting civilians, firing towards the centre of the civilian population.'
Another target hit early on Sunday morning was confirmed as the Weizmann Institute, a civilian research and science centre in Rehovot, near Tel Aviv.
This strike blurred the lines between the civilian and military worlds. While the Weizmann is considered an academic facility, its researchers have often contributed to Israel;s military developments.
Similar strikes happened in the port city of Haifa, home to Israel's largest oil refinery.
Pipelines and transmission lines serving the facility were damaged in the strikes, according to a regulatory filing to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, reported by the Reuters news agency.
Meanwhile in Tamra, an Arab city just east of Haifa, reports emerged that four women were killed, and a dozen injured, when an Iranian missile hit a two-storey house.
How did they get through?
Just short of 10 per cent of the hundreds of missiles fired by Iran have evaded Israel's complex web of air-defences.
Israel's military, in order not to offer any information that could aid Tehran in future attacks, has given no official comment on the number of missiles that got through.
However, the Iranian air strikes demonstrate the difficulty even one of the world's best air defence systems has when it comes to ballistic missiles.
Ballistic missiles can fly at hypersonic speeds above Mach-5, meaning very few surface-to-air batteries are capable of intercepting them.
Israel's 'David's Sling' – named after the Biblical story of David and Goliath – is one of them. But with barrages of dozens of missiles at a time, even this system has difficulty keeping up.
The larger the number of missiles, the more chance there is of at least one sneaking through and finding its target.
Experts have said it is likely that Iran is using the bulk of its ballistic missiles to 'distract and saturate' air defences to create an opening for more advanced weapons.
That missile appears to be the Shahed Haj Qassem, which was fired at Israel for the first time at the weekend.
It is said to have a range of around 1,000 miles and uses solid-based fuel, which means it can be stored underground for years and brought up for firing.
The Iranian missiles focus on 'speed and range, at the cost of precision', according to Justin Crump, the chief executive of geopolitical risk analysts Sibylline.
This makes it all the more likely that Tehran misses its military targets and hits civilian buildings surrounding them.
While Israel is only a small country, it is likely that its armed forces concentrate its defences on military targets, rather than civilian areas.
How long can Iran continue?
Before it started bombarding Israel, Iran was believed to have as many as 2,000 missiles capable of hitting the Jewish state in its arsenal.
The Islamic regime has been significantly ramping up production to bolster its arsenal in recent years, according to the IDF.
'The assessment entering this conflict was that Iran has about 2,000 missiles. We understand they have a plan to increase that number dramatically – to 8,000 missiles – in the near future,' Lt Col Shoshani said on Sunday.
Earlier Mr Netanyahu had claimed Iran's accelerated production meant it hoped to build 300 missiles a month, meaning it would have 20,000 in six years time.
Using those estimates, as well as the current rate of fire, Iran would likely run out of munitions in 'three weeks at current rates', Mr Crump said.
But that does not take account of the work being done by the IDF inside Iran to neutralise its ballistic missiles programme.
Israel has published footage, some of which is backed up by satellite images, of strikes on Iranian launchers, depots, and missile fuel plants.
Depending on Israel's successes inside Iran, this could considerably shorten the length of time that the Islamic regime is able to sustain its long-range bombardments.