Missile Defense Works. Iran is Adapting and Learning How to Defeat It.
Iran’s deadly missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan earlier this week should force American, Israeli and allied defense officials to confront an uncomfortable reality.
Despite weeks of sustained military operations against Iran’s missile forces, launch facilities and supporting infrastructure, Tehran retains a significant arsenal capable of threatening American forces and Washington’s regional partners.
The Wall Street Journal now reports that three US service members were killed in the attack. Military analysts believe Iran may have used some of its most capable ballistic missiles, including the Kheibar Shekan medium-range system.
The solid-fueled missile has a range of at least 900 miles, and Iran claims that it carries a maneuverable reentry vehicle designed to complicate interception. This underscores a problem that has become increasingly apparent during the war: destroying large numbers of Iranian missiles, launchers and military facilities is not the same as eliminating Iran’s ability to retaliate.
Iran does not need to preserve its entire prewar arsenal. Nor does it need to penetrate American and allied defenses consistently. Tehran needs only to preserve enough launchers, missiles and drones to impose periodic—but politically and militarily significant—costs.
That is a much lower threshold for strategic success.
Iran prepared to survive
For decades, Iran has watched how the United States fights.
It has seen the central role that air superiority, precision weapons, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and long-range strike capabilities played in American military operations from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Syria.
Iranian leaders understood that they could not match the United States platform for platform or aircraft for aircraft. Instead, they invested in ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, underground facilities, mobile launchers and dispersed military infrastructure.
My colleague Tom Karako, a leading missile-defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Journal that Iran has built an infrastructure specifically designed to survive a war with the United States after spending decades studying American military operations. It appears to be working—at least in part.
The United States and Israel have inflicted enormous damage on Iran’s military. But Iranian forces have repaired access to some previously struck underground missile facilities and resumed operations from them, according to analysts cited by the Journal. Tehran has also continued launching missiles and drones more than a week after the latest round of American strikes began. Iran does not need to defeat the United States or Israel conventionally. It needs to survive, preserve enough offensive capability to impose costs and demonstrate that continued military operations will not be painless.
The strike in Jordan shows that Tehran still possesses that capability.
A missile defense system is more than its interceptors
Public discussions about missile defense frequently focus on the interceptor: Did a Patriot, THAAD, Arrow or another defensive missile successfully destroy the incoming threat?
But an effective missile-defense architecture is a system of systems.
It depends on space-based warning systems, ground- and sea-based radars, communications networks, command-and-control facilities, data links, trained personnel and the interceptors themselves. If any critical part of that architecture is blinded, disrupted or destroyed, the effectiveness of the entire network can decline.
Iran appears to understand this vulnerability.
According to the Journal, Iranian attacks earlier in the conflict damaged radars and other defensive infrastructure in Jordan and several Gulf countries. Ran Kochav, a former commander of Israel’s air and missile defense forces, suggested that this earlier damage may help explain why more Iranian missiles are now penetrating regional defenses.
Rather than focusing exclusively on overwhelming missile defenses with large salvos, Iran can attack the architecture that makes interception possible. By striking radars, communications networks, power supplies and command centers, Tehran can create gaps that later missile and drone attacks may exploit.
Radars are particularly attractive targets. They must emit energy to perform their mission, making them comparatively easy to detect. They are also difficult to conceal, expensive to replace and essential to tracking incoming threats.
An interceptor cannot destroy a missile that the defensive network cannot see, track or classify in time.
The defender faces a harder problem
The strategic imbalance between attacker and defender is profound.
Iran can choose when, where and how to attack. It can vary the size, timing and composition of its salvos. It can combine ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. It can target air bases, ports, command centers, missile-defense batteries, energy infrastructure or civilian population centers.
The defender must be prepared to protect all of them.
The estimated 50,000 American military personnel stationed across the region operate from a geographically dispersed network of facilities. Protecting every base, housing area, runway, aircraft shelter, logistics site and command center against every possible combination of threats is extraordinarily difficult. Indeed, no missile defense system is impenetrable.
Even a defense that intercepts 90 or 95 percent of incoming weapons may permit several missiles to reach their targets during a sustained campaign. Against military bases containing personnel, aircraft, fuel and munitions, a small number of successful strikes can have disproportionate consequences.
The problem is compounded by economics.
An inexpensive drone can force the defender to launch an interceptor costing hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of dollars. Iran can also compel the United States and its allies to expend interceptors against decoys, obsolete missiles and relatively inexpensive systems.
Over time, the attacker may seek to exhaust the defender’s interceptor inventories, damage its sensors and identify patterns in its operations.
The attacker does not have to defeat the defensive architecture in a single engagement. It can erode it gradually.
The lesson for Israel and the United States
None of this means that missile defense has failed.
The opposite is true.
American, Israeli and allied air and missile defenses have saved lives, protected critical infrastructure and prevented Iran from achieving far more damaging results. Israel’s layered architecture—including Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow systems—has demonstrated the operational value of sustained investment in missile defense.
But success can breed complacency.
The systems that performed effectively during the early phases of a conflict will not necessarily perform equally well after weeks or months of sustained combat. Interceptor inventories decline. Crews become fatigued. Equipment requires maintenance. Radars may be damaged. Adversaries study defensive patterns and adjust their tactics.
The United States, Israel and their partners must therefore approach missile defense as a continuously evolving competition rather than a static technological achievement.
First, missile-defense sensors must become more mobile, distributed, redundant and survivable. A regional architecture dependent on a relatively small number of fixed radars creates potentially catastrophic points of failure.
Second, the United States and its allies should expand the use of passive defenses. Hardened aircraft shelters, protected personnel facilities, camouflage, deception, dispersal and rapid runway repair cannot intercept a missile, but they can reduce the damage caused when one penetrates the active defenses.
Third, allied governments must improve their ability to repair and replace damaged sensors rapidly. Spare radar components, mobile replacement systems and trained repair teams should be positioned throughout the region before a crisis begins.
Fourth, the United States and its partners need more affordable options for defeating drones and other lower-cost threats. Electronic warfare, directed-energy systems, guns and less expensive interceptors must complement high-end systems such as Patriot, THAAD and Arrow.
Finally, the industrial base must be capable of replenishing interceptor inventories at the speed and scale required by modern war. A missile defense system that works brilliantly for several weeks but runs short of interceptors during a prolonged conflict is not strategically sustainable.
Conclusion
The latest attacks are highly consistent with what I have been writing over the past several months.
Air and missile defenses have generally performed well against Iranian missiles and drones. But the Iranians are also learning, evolving and adapting. One of the most consequential steps they have taken is attacking the radars and sensors on which missile-defense systems depend.
As I wrote recently in RealClearDefense:
“Iran and other adversaries clearly understand that blinding or degrading sensors could be as valuable as striking launchers or airfields. Knock out the sensors, and you can seriously weaken the entire defensive architecture.”
Recent combat has validated the fundamental case for missile defense. It works. It saves lives. It protects military forces and civilian populations. And it preserves freedom of action for national leaders.
But missile defense cannot be treated as a shield that, once constructed, remains permanently effective.
It is part of a competitive cycle. Every successful interception teaches the attacker something. Every salvo provides data about radar coverage, interceptor performance, command-and-control procedures and potential vulnerabilities.
Iran is learning from this war. Russia, China and North Korea are watching as well.
The question is no longer whether missile defense works—it does.
The question is whether the United States, Israel and their allies can adapt, replenish and strengthen their defensive networks quickly enough to prevent adversaries from rendering today’s advantages obsolete.
