Hacker News Reader

Comment by willmadden | Hacker News Reader

From the footage it looks like the majority of the ballistic missiles are getting through the Israel's defenses. Their missiles travel between mach 5 and mach 16, so that makes sense.

Somehow there are no reports of Israeli casualties (yet).

We'll see how Israel responds, or if they keep their focus on southern Lebanon.

View on HN

>> are getting through the Israel's defenses.

Or are being detected, tracked, and ignored unless they are likely to land somewhere important.

This seems likely based on the casualty number being reported. Also, Israel is claiming many intercepts so not sure how accurate it is to stay most are getting through.

Quite a few of them are clearly getting through:

https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1ftt06t/doze...

https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1fttep9/mult...

I'm greatly skeptical that nobody else has been killed, and that damage is minimal.

It is definitely not in major cities, otherwise we would've already known.

It might be that Iran doesn't want to cause any real damage (as then Israel would destroy its oil industry and nuclear sites in retaliation) — it only wants to save face. For that, a media picture of "hundreds of missiles falling on Israel" would perfectly suffice — they can sell it domestically. Just bomb some bushes and deserts and call it a day.

Then they wouldn't target Tel Aviv. They tried to do as much damage as possible because their little terror squads lost massive ground. And before the argument resurfaces, yes, Israels military action was precisely targeted at military opponents, in contrast to this attack.

Those could have been fragments of already intercepted ballistic missiles though.

Well there was one kill, a Palestinian man in Jericho with a dead missile falling on his head.

On this Mario podcast they're saying Iran shifted manufacturing from drones and rockets to ballistic missiles was because the drones were so easy to intercept. Many of Iran's ballistic missiles travel at mach 15. That's way too fast to intercept reliably. Some are slower. I don't know what was used here.

Mach 15 seems to fall into "hypersonic" weapon territory. Did they develop their own tech or buy it from Russia?

"Hypersonic" is a misnomer, most long range rockets hit hypersonic speeds. "Hypersonic" refers to steerable hypersonic glide vehicles that can turn to make them harder to intercept. There is no evidence yet that any of them were used in this attack.

If it's the Fattah-1, it was developed in-house by the IRGC.

Having said that, I have no idea if there was some tech transfer from Russia to Iran to enable it.

I doubt it, Iran has such capabilities themselves. Apart from their insane regime they have a lot of smart people. Ballistic rockets burn a few seconds and then just follow their ballistic path, which is quite predictable.

Cruise missiles are harder to intercept because you don't know where they will hit. They can change course on short notice which ballistic missiles cannot do after burning their fuel.

Ballistic missile warheads have flown at these speeds for many years. The term "hypersonic" when it refers to missiles is frustratingly imprecise; hypersonic in the sense you're using it refers to more modern weapons capable of substantial maneuvers and not restricted to a ballistic trajectory. Iran is incapable of producing these types of weapons.

Note that plain old ballistic missile warheads are quite challenging to intercept. Past operational systems used nuclear warheads on the interceptors.

Even Nazi Germany's V2 was almost hypersonic. "Hypersonic" is an abused term from Russia to make old missiles sound better than they are.

Supersonic as a novelty refers to supersonic cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles are something different. Larger range but unguided after they burned all their fuel. But they do reach supersonic speeds.

Cruise missiles have a lower range but can change course. This makes interception more difficult since you don't know for sure where they will hit. The difficulty in intercepting ballistic missiles is that they are very fast and supersonic cruise missiles would make up for the weakness of being generally slower.

The only guided munitions in WW2 I know of were naval torpedoes, I think everything else was still unguided.

There were guided bombs in WW2, radio command and even IR experimentally.

There were radio-guided gravity bombs during WW2, the V-1 cruise missiles was also radio guided as well as the V-2 ballistic missile.

That's just fantasy.

I think there is one reported casualty. From almost 200 ballistic missiles?

There is extensive footage online: below is an example with multiple attempts at interception in a location which, presumably, must be somewhere "important" for those systems to be present. I'd argue it's difficult to claim such barrages can be "tracked, detected, ignored". As for the casualties, it's only been a short period of time, one would hope they do not increase as the situation is assessed.

https://x.com/UKR_Report/status/1841172196678311945

A terror attack unfortunately killed some people, but as it stands the only victim was a Palestinian, which the Iranian regime so often proclaims to care for.

No casualities increased at all 5 days later. Only dead was a Palestinian in Jericho.

When Iran struck US bases in Iraq in 2020, there were also no deaths. Drone footage shows that the Iranian missiles hit their targets: [0]. The reason why nobody died was that the Iranians told the Americans in advance that they were going to attack.

Iran also gave Israel advance warning of this attack, and again only struck military targets. That's why no Israelis died.

0. https://youtu.be/YfjxHjs0hKo?si=pU004yvIsl4TpD8e

Interception of intermediate-range BMs is much more expensive than short-range (and slower) missiles. Israel are likely being discriminating in what they counter. They may also have limited antimissile munitions.

Cost-wise, defence costs ~$1m -- 3.5m per launch. The attacks are costing Iran ~$80k per missile.

So that's a ~$15m attack which would cost ~$400m to defend against completely.

The Guardian discussed this: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/01/stopping-iran-...>.

I know the Guardian wrote "80K (pounds, not dollars) or more. However, I question that floor. I wonder what long range ballistic missile actually costs only 80K pounds.

Some cheesy Scud derivative banged out with low labor costs and minimal regard for materials and tolerances? Probably cost as much in HE and fuel as baseline hw under mass production.

What are the ingredients to a missile? 1 fashioned cylinder, 4 winglets, 1 Raspberry Pi, 1 large glob of explosives, 1 solid fuel propellant?

Obviously I'm being facetious, but we're not talking about some crazy hi-tech gizmos or even genuinely ground-breaking technology, and that price does get a Tesla or two, so really $100,000 isn't cheap. Plus we are not discussing U.S. DoD contractor prices which "everyone knows" have no known correlation to reality.

Hamas's Qassam rockets are basically steel pipe, fins, nozzle, sugar + fertiliser solid fuel, and warhead of various materials: TNT, ammonium nitrate, possibly a grenade.

No guidance. These are basically aerial mines and serve as area-denial weapons.

Of the many thousands of Qassam rockets launched, they've inflicted 23 deaths (22 Israeli citizens, one Thai national), per Wikipedia:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket>

http://nations-militaryequipmentlist.weebly.com/ballistic-mi...

take it for what you will, but lists the cheapest iranian long range ballistic missile at $3mil (and no longer in production)

this seems to have similar data

https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/neither-israel-nor-iran...

> "The (Iranian) drones are not costly, around $50,000 (and) $250,000 for each cruise missile and from $1 to 10 million for a ballistic missile, depending on the model," he says.

That's why Arrow 4 and 5 that are being developed are half the price.

Another factor: in the earlier attack, Israel and the US had days to prepare.

Combined with heavy use of slow drones (which can be tracked and hunted down), this permitted far more positioning and preparation of countermeasures.

Yesterday's defence was mobilised in hours to minutes. The ballistic flight time from Iran to Israel is twelve minutes.

A high quality ballistic missile costs in the millions. Iran is estimated to have around 3000 of them, so its not like they're an infinite resource.

>Somehow there are no reports of Israeli casualties (yet).

It's almost like it's a country under constant missile attacks from all sides. And they spent money on shelters.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com