A world war in waiting
An act of war. I’ll just bet you didn’t see or hear those words in any coverage over the weekend of Iran’s aggression from the air on Israel. What else can we call 120 ballistic missiles; 170 armed drones; 30 cruise missiles? That’s what Iran fired at Israel Saturday night. One report I read said the barrage was fired from three countries in addition to Iran: Iraq, Yemen and Syria. How would you feel if you were walking down the street on Saturday night in Chicago or Indianapolis or Phoenix or Seattle, and suddenly you began to hear the sound of explosions, and you looked up and saw streaks of flaming debris from exploded missiles falling to the ground? Would it feel like you were witnessing a war on the city where you live, on your country?
You bet it would, especially when you consider what went into the Iranian attack. Iran knew that Israel has spent the last few decades building its so-called Iron Dome missile defense capability – a complex system of radars and anti-missile missile launchers that encircle its military installations and population centers like Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and the cities in Israel’s north within striking distance of Hezbollah missiles. We can be certain that Iran spent days if not weeks preparing for Saturday night’s strike, working out a plan to launch its barrage of drones and missiles to reach targets in Israel in a swarm that might overwhelm Israel’s anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense system.
Defending against even a few missiles is an incredibly complex task. The missiles and drones must be picked up on radar far enough out from their targets that they can be engaged by anti-missile missiles fired from the ground and from Israeli aircraft stationed along Israel’s eastern borders. Neither Jordan nor Israel has admitted it openly, but it seems likely that Jordanian airspace was opened to Israeli warplanes defending Israel from the Iranian attack. Jordan admitted on Sunday that it had opened its airspace to “allied” forces — and Britain and the U.S. announced that their warplanes had shot down multiple drones as they flew toward Israel. Israel and the Pentagon claim that 99 percent of the missiles and drones fired on Sunday were shot down.
Some of the shootdowns took place over Iraq, Syria and Jordan, according to Pentagon reports on Sunday. The Washington Post reported that two squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagles were deployed to intercept drones headed for Israel. One squadron was based in North Carolina, and the other in the U.K. The Air Force fighters can be used as air-to-air fighters, as bombers, and for what the Pentagon described as “deep interdiction.” This means U.S. fighters were lingering in airspace in the 1,000 miles between Iran and Israel, backed up by AWACS air defense command-and-control aircraft and aerial refueling tankers supplying fuel to the F-15’s to keep them airborne for hours at a time. The Pentagon said on Sunday that U.S. aircraft were involved in shooting down about 70 Iranian drones. Two U.S. destroyers based in the Mediterranean shot down between four and six ballistic missiles, and a U.S. Patriot battery based in Irbil, Iraq, shot down at least one Iranian ballistic missile as it crossed Iraqi airspace on its way toward Israel.
So, many of the drones and missiles Iran aimed at Israel were shot down before they even reached Israel. Still, in the early hours of Sunday morning in Israel, a swarm of ballistic and cruise missiles got through the outer defense ring and had to be engaged by Israel’s Iron Dome defense. Shooting down a large number of missiles that arrive all at once is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. The ballistic missiles must be picked up and tracked on radars while they are outside the earth’s atmosphere. As they close in on their targets, other Iron Dome radars begin tracking them, and each missile is assigned by a missile defense control system to individual anti-missile missile launchers which fire at the individual missiles to shoot them down.
This is an excerpt from my weekly Salon column. To read the rest of the column, follow the link below:
Let’s not forget that Israel’s bombing of Iran’s embassy in Syria was an act of war as well. Needs to also be counted in the endless, stupid game called “tit for tat”
Iran gave advance warning to Israel so they were prepared. It was, as you said, a great accomplishment. Israel’s attacked the embassy of a sovereign nation against international protocol and without advance notice to the US. I hope they stop doing stupid things. If they do, we need to stop funding the Zionists, stop foreign aid, and stop supplying munitions.