Iran's Monthly Surprise: Three Key Points of Future Air Defense Strategy

Key Chapter Title List

1. Interceptor Inventory Management
2. Low-Warning Ballistic Missile Attack
3. Air Defense Passive Defense
4. Assessment of Israel's Air Defense Operational Effectiveness
5. Types and Technical Characteristics of Iranian Ballistic Missiles
6. Analysis of Strategic Deterrence Balance Between Adversaries
7. Prediction of Subsequent Military Actions

Document Introduction

On the evening of October 1, 2024, local time, Iran launched its long-anticipated retaliatory strike against Israel, an action responding to the increasingly urgent demands of its proxy, Hezbollah, over recent weeks. This attack, as Iran's third direct conventional military strike, forms a strategic contrast with the 2020 attack against U.S. forces in Iraq and the April 2024 attack against Israel, providing a key case study for analyzing the real-world effectiveness of modern air defense systems.

The report's core focuses on three major air defense strategic points highlighted by Iran's strike operation, forming the essential framework for understanding the logic of air defense operations in future asymmetric conflicts. First, interceptor inventory management became a key constraint in Israel's air defense decision-making—the fundamental law in missile defense dictates that interceptor costs and technical complexity are inevitably higher than those of the target munitions. Israel faced difficult choices in balancing interceptor consumption and inventory across its short-range "Iron Dome," medium-range "David's Sling," and long-range "Arrow" systems.

Second, Iran's operation demonstrated tactical innovation in low-warning ballistic missile attacks: providing only about 7 hours of strategic warning and 2 hours of public warning, while abandoning easily intercepted cruise missiles and drones, and concentrating on using domestically produced liquid-fuel medium-range ballistic missiles (including Shahab-3 and its improved variants Ghadr-110H and Emad), significantly enhancing the element of surprise. Although liquid-fuel missiles have the inherent drawback of a longer launch preparation cycle, Iran achieved a strategic surprise effect through tactical optimization.

Finally, the value of passive defense systems in saturation attacks was fully validated. Israel, relying on hardened shelter facilities, mature early warning and shelter plans, and the resilience of its populace, effectively controlled civilian casualties, confirming the air defense concept that passive defense is equally important as active interception systems.

In this attack, Israel's interception rate was approximately 50%, far lower than the 95% in the April attack. This data reflects its selective interception strategy under inventory constraints—prioritizing the protection of high-value strategic targets while selectively not intercepting incoming missiles targeting low-value areas. The report also predicts that Israel's most likely subsequent countermeasure is to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. Due to geographical distance limitations, Iran's manpower advantage is difficult to translate into direct deterrence against Israel. The future missile offense and defense between the two sides will remain a strategic game centered on the quantity of interceptors versus incoming munitions.