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Why didn't Iran use its capability to take down enemy jets for an entire month?

by karp773 6mo ago

maxglute 6mo ago
Speculation. 1. Iran was retarded and didn't preemptively strike US staging who had local overmatch and first mover advantage. Nothing to do but weather hits, chip away at regional basing and wait until US+Israel operation tempo goes down. Can't sustain surge sorties forever, especially with regional logistics wrecked. US pilots tired now, on stims, making mistakes. 2. Iran not remain retarded, was hide and bide, waited for US to get complement, gathering data / building tactics to squeeze out surface-air without getting glassed. Regardless, Iranian capability seems much less degraded than claimed. Who knows how many of the 20k+ targets hit was basically just drawing down highend munition inventory, which now forces flying closer on lower end munitions. At the end of the day, Iranian mosaic forces are chilling in underground bunkers waiting for US+co to make mistakes. Consider Iraq, a much smaller country by every metric ate 5x more sorties from more carriers and sustained regional air campaign and fell because they hedged on centralized IADs. Granted most Iranian hits are precision munitions (more efficient per sortie), but we simply should not expect Iran doctrine built on distributed survivability to be remotely defeated relative to effort expended.
- Saline9515 6mo ago
  Also the US has been mostly using cruise missiles, which don't require to get close to the targets. Now that those ammunitions are gone, they have to take more risks and use gliding bombs with GPS kits, which have a much shorter range.
asdff 6mo ago
Iran doesn't have to shoot down a single jet to win this war. Just move military hardware into caves. Sacrifice civilian infrastructure as the only viable bombing target. Wait it out until American domestic pressure from perceived war crimes ends the war. They can't afford to fight a land war or garrison over the entire country. The fact that Israel has leveled much of the 140 square miles of gaza over the past 3 years and still fails to remove Hamas from power. No chance against 636,372 square miles and 93 million people. Worse odds than Vietnam. There isn't even a defined victory condition.
- subw00f 6mo ago
  Wow, "perceived war crimes", what an interesting way of saying war crimes.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    Real and perceived. The lay public aren't generally students of international law.
    - iririririr 6mo ago
      [dead]
- praptak 6mo ago
  > There isn't even a defined victory condition. It's even worse if you consider what rational options the mullahs have. Yes, they are a murderous dictatorship and enemies of US - no question about that. But they did nothing to provoke this particular attack and they still got bombed. Backing off without first inflicting severe pain is just not an option in this situation. It would be an invitation to get bombed at will.
  - ineedaj0b 6mo ago
    they were making a nuke, plenty of details there - and no one wants another NK situation in the world. Btw, Iran with conventional missiles struck its Arab neighbors. After Trump leaves office the next President will still hate Iran irregardless of political party.
    - asdff 6mo ago
      North Korea, famous for attacking with nukes. Once again the only nation that has ever used nukes on another nation is the United States. If anything it is the United States that should be disarmed because there is already precedent that they will use them. Everyone else developed the bomb because of the United States having it and having a monopoly on destroying any city with a single bomb.
thinkcontext 6mo ago
They are thinking on a longer timeline than a month. They kept some anti-air missiles in reserve for this phase of the war, where they aren't trying to defend Iran's airspace. They just need to hide and wait for opportunities to occasionally hurt the US, Israel and the other Gulf states.
ACCount37 6mo ago
Probably because their air defenses were too busy getting shot to shit. There was a lot of Iranian AA losses in the opening phase of this war. US went town on anything that looked remotely like AA to secure the sky for themselves, and operated with ever-increasing impunity since. Between advanced ISR, stealth, ECM and stand-off munitions, US has a lot of tools to make the lives of AA crews into a living hell. It's unclear what happened here exactly. It might be a "straggler" SAM that wasn't destroyed in the strikes, might be US going too aggressively and putting reduced survivability airframes within an area that wasn't sufficiently cleared, might be an Iranian adaptation not unlike the "SAMbushes" seen in Ukraine. I don't see it as a sign that Iran is somehow reconstituting its AA capabilities though.
- bigyabai 6mo ago
  > It's unclear what happened here exactly. It really isn't. A huge portion of Iran's air defenses are designed for road-mobility and pop-up attacks instead of long-term point defense, encompassing hundreds of launchers total: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Defense_Force#Air_defense_missile_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islam... Military strategists long warned that air campaigns flying over South Iran would have to contend with passively-guided SAMs and MANPADS on their way to Tehran. There are hundreds of road-accessible caves in the Zagros range that cannot be inspected via satellite. They inherently present a risk to overflights unless they are occupied on the ground first; it's common knowledge why Kohgiluyeh and Fars are so dangerous.
  - ACCount37 6mo ago
    Considered that this is the first jet shot down in the entire war? "High mobility SAMs" alone completely fails to explain it. They had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it. Something else must have happened there.
    - bigyabai 6mo ago
      Not the first jet hit, and definitely not the first aircraft downed. The F-35 incident was widely suspected to be a Qaem 118 missile, which fits the bill for road mobile multispectral SAM perfectly. More than a dozen drones were downed too, and even the rescue helicopters are evading air defenses according to CENTCOM. > They had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it. This is certainly something to show for it. Iran's air defenses are not like Israel's or Qatar's, they don't have the money or security to build expensive anti-ballistic layers for air defense. These smaller, road-mobile systems are intended to exploit an overextending enemy, and for that purpose they're apparently working quite well.
hajile 6mo ago
Maybe they've been taking down jets the entire time and you've simply been lied to and the situation on the ground is different than what you believe. CENTCOM tweeted that no shootdown occurred only for Iran to show the wreckage and one of the ejection seats. CENTCOM said Iran didn't shoot down the F-35, but it apparently crashed in Saudi Arabia and we sent out a Chinook to run search patterns to find it. CENTCOM claimed a single Kuwait (ghost of Kuwait?) shot down three different F-15s by accident, but those planes were close enough to Iran that they could have been targeted by Iran (which seems more likely than the massive chain of mistakes required for the Kuwaiti shootdown to happen). CENTCOM also only talks about US planes shot down and excludes Israeli F-15 that have been hit. CENTCOM also doesn't count all the very expensive drones that have been shot down, but their total value is at least a half-billion dollars. Finally, CENTCOM is straight-up lying about air superiority. They claimed they'd switched to gravity bombs, but people instantly noticed that all the planes going up were using long-range JASSM stand-off missiles so they don't have to actually go very far inside Iran and can keep their planes in a safer section of the country. CENTCOM loaded up a B-52 with JDAMs and took a couple pictures, but all the pictures after that photo-op still show super-expensive JASSM (costing as much as $1.6M each). If our planes never enter their airspace, there's nothing for them to shoot down. I'd note they've also shot down a couple of JASSM missiles which is interesting itself as the radar cross-section of a JASSM is believed to be pretty close to an F-35. Iran is currently using bongo trucks with an IRST and a couple missiles that can even loiter in the air if there's no target. Being electro-optically guided means they are passive and the human element makes them a lot less likely to miss due to chaff. These little trucks can hide ANYWHERE and because they aren't a massive multi-vehicle setup like a Patriot or S-300, they should be able to relocate often and quickly (they might even be able to stay mobile while in operation). This mobility combined, ability to hide as a normal truck, and completely passive sensors make them almost impossible to find and destroy.
karp773 6mo ago
Downvoters, care to explain? Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?
- standardUser 6mo ago
  We don't know what downed it yet, so it's hard to say. Iran is hiding and rationing their offensive munitions, we know that, so it's not surprising when the number of drone and missile attacks spikes after weeks of bombing. That's part of the plan. But the ability to take down a US fighter jet is not something they are rationing- it's likely at the edge of their capabilities and they got lucky. If they could be knocking down more, they would be.
- ranger207 6mo ago
  Air defense is not static. Even fixed launchers can be moved, and reacting to how your enemy is operating is an important part of air defense tactics. The famous F-117 shootdown happened because the air defense operators carefully planned around how the US was using its aircraft. If most Iranian air defenses were destroyed in the first few days, it'd make more sense for them to hold whatever was still available for the sort of situation where they had much higher chances of scoring a kill than just throwing it out there to get destroyed immediately and accomplish nothing.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago
  If you want a real explanation, this is how defensive wars against an overwhelming opponent are fought. Iran knows that they can't build an iron-clad air defense perimeter, there still isn't a reliable answer against stealth aircraft and cruise missiles. They never had a chance of shooting down every plane that enters their airspace, and that isn't their goal. Instead, they will fight this war by absorbing blow after blow, hiding their capabilities and striking back when it is advantageous. All Iran needs to do to win is: 1) Outlast the US air campaign - note this only requires protecting enough of their defensive capabilities to remain difficult. It does not require shooting down every US aircraft that enters their borders. It does not require shooting down most aircraft that enter their borders. 2) Prevent free shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. That's it. They just need to apply economic pain as domestic and international opposition to the unprovoked attack grows.

Why didn't Iran use its capability to take down enemy jets for an entire month?

by karp773 6mo ago

Why didn't Iran use its capability to take down enemy jets for an entire month?

Speculation. 1. Iran was retarded and didn't preemptively strike US staging who had local overmatch and first mover advantage. Nothing to do but weather hits, chip away at regional basing and wait until US+Israel operation tempo goes down. Can't sustain surge sorties forever, especially with regional logistics wrecked. US pilots tired now, on stims, making mistakes. 2. Iran not remain retarded, was hide and bide, waited for US to get complement, gathering data / building tactics to squeeze out surface-air without getting glassed. Regardless, Iranian capability seems much less degraded than claimed. Who knows how many of the 20k+ targets hit was basically just drawing down highend munition inventory, which now forces flying closer on lower end munitions. At the end of the day, Iranian mosaic forces are chilling in underground bunkers waiting for US+co to make mistakes. Consider Iraq, a much smaller country by every metric ate 5x more sorties from more carriers and sustained regional air campaign and fell because they hedged on centralized IADs. Granted most Iranian hits are precision munitions (more efficient per sortie), but we simply should not expect Iran doctrine built on distributed survivability to be remotely defeated relative to effort expended.

Saline9515 6mo ago
Also the US has been mostly using cruise missiles, which don't require to get close to the targets. Now that those ammunitions are gone, they have to take more risks and use gliding bombs with GPS kits, which have a much shorter range.

asdff 6mo ago

Iran doesn't have to shoot down a single jet to win this war. Just move military hardware into caves. Sacrifice civilian infrastructure as the only viable bombing target. Wait it out until American domestic pressure from perceived war crimes ends the war. They can't afford to fight a land war or garrison over the entire country. The fact that Israel has leveled much of the 140 square miles of gaza over the past 3 years and still fails to remove Hamas from power. No chance against 636,372 square miles and 93 million people. Worse odds than Vietnam. There isn't even a defined victory condition.

subw00f 6mo ago
Wow, "perceived war crimes", what an interesting way of saying war crimes.
- asdff 6mo ago
  Real and perceived. The lay public aren't generally students of international law.
  - iririririr 6mo ago
    [dead]
praptak 6mo ago
> There isn't even a defined victory condition. It's even worse if you consider what rational options the mullahs have. Yes, they are a murderous dictatorship and enemies of US - no question about that. But they did nothing to provoke this particular attack and they still got bombed. Backing off without first inflicting severe pain is just not an option in this situation. It would be an invitation to get bombed at will.
- ineedaj0b 6mo ago
  they were making a nuke, plenty of details there - and no one wants another NK situation in the world. Btw, Iran with conventional missiles struck its Arab neighbors. After Trump leaves office the next President will still hate Iran irregardless of political party.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    North Korea, famous for attacking with nukes. Once again the only nation that has ever used nukes on another nation is the United States. If anything it is the United States that should be disarmed because there is already precedent that they will use them. Everyone else developed the bomb because of the United States having it and having a monopoly on destroying any city with a single bomb.

thinkcontext 6mo ago

They are thinking on a longer timeline than a month. They kept some anti-air missiles in reserve for this phase of the war, where they aren't trying to defend Iran's airspace. They just need to hide and wait for opportunities to occasionally hurt the US, Israel and the other Gulf states.

ACCount37 6mo ago

Probably because their air defenses were too busy getting shot to shit. There was a lot of Iranian AA losses in the opening phase of this war. US went town on anything that looked remotely like AA to secure the sky for themselves, and operated with ever-increasing impunity since. Between advanced ISR, stealth, ECM and stand-off munitions, US has a lot of tools to make the lives of AA crews into a living hell. It's unclear what happened here exactly. It might be a "straggler" SAM that wasn't destroyed in the strikes, might be US going too aggressively and putting reduced survivability airframes within an area that wasn't sufficiently cleared, might be an Iranian adaptation not unlike the "SAMbushes" seen in Ukraine. I don't see it as a sign that Iran is somehow reconstituting its AA capabilities though.

bigyabai 6mo ago
> It's unclear what happened here exactly. It really isn't. A huge portion of Iran's air defenses are designed for road-mobility and pop-up attacks instead of long-term point defense, encompassing hundreds of launchers total: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Air_Defense_Force#Air_defense_missile_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Islam... Military strategists long warned that air campaigns flying over South Iran would have to contend with passively-guided SAMs and MANPADS on their way to Tehran. There are hundreds of road-accessible caves in the Zagros range that cannot be inspected via satellite. They inherently present a risk to overflights unless they are occupied on the ground first; it's common knowledge why Kohgiluyeh and Fars are so dangerous.
- ACCount37 6mo ago
  Considered that this is the first jet shot down in the entire war? "High mobility SAMs" alone completely fails to explain it. They had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it. Something else must have happened there.
  - bigyabai 6mo ago
    Not the first jet hit, and definitely not the first aircraft downed. The F-35 incident was widely suspected to be a Qaem 118 missile, which fits the bill for road mobile multispectral SAM perfectly. More than a dozen drones were downed too, and even the rescue helicopters are evading air defenses according to CENTCOM. > They had high mobility SAMs for the entire war, with nothing to show for it. This is certainly something to show for it. Iran's air defenses are not like Israel's or Qatar's, they don't have the money or security to build expensive anti-ballistic layers for air defense. These smaller, road-mobile systems are intended to exploit an overextending enemy, and for that purpose they're apparently working quite well.

hajile 6mo ago

Maybe they've been taking down jets the entire time and you've simply been lied to and the situation on the ground is different than what you believe. CENTCOM tweeted that no shootdown occurred only for Iran to show the wreckage and one of the ejection seats. CENTCOM said Iran didn't shoot down the F-35, but it apparently crashed in Saudi Arabia and we sent out a Chinook to run search patterns to find it. CENTCOM claimed a single Kuwait (ghost of Kuwait?) shot down three different F-15s by accident, but those planes were close enough to Iran that they could have been targeted by Iran (which seems more likely than the massive chain of mistakes required for the Kuwaiti shootdown to happen). CENTCOM also only talks about US planes shot down and excludes Israeli F-15 that have been hit. CENTCOM also doesn't count all the very expensive drones that have been shot down, but their total value is at least a half-billion dollars. Finally, CENTCOM is straight-up lying about air superiority. They claimed they'd switched to gravity bombs, but people instantly noticed that all the planes going up were using long-range JASSM stand-off missiles so they don't have to actually go very far inside Iran and can keep their planes in a safer section of the country. CENTCOM loaded up a B-52 with JDAMs and took a couple pictures, but all the pictures after that photo-op still show super-expensive JASSM (costing as much as $1.6M each). If our planes never enter their airspace, there's nothing for them to shoot down. I'd note they've also shot down a couple of JASSM missiles which is interesting itself as the radar cross-section of a JASSM is believed to be pretty close to an F-35. Iran is currently using bongo trucks with an IRST and a couple missiles that can even loiter in the air if there's no target. Being electro-optically guided means they are passive and the human element makes them a lot less likely to miss due to chaff. These little trucks can hide ANYWHERE and because they aren't a massive multi-vehicle setup like a Patriot or S-300, they should be able to relocate often and quickly (they might even be able to stay mobile while in operation). This mobility combined, ability to hide as a normal truck, and completely passive sensors make them almost impossible to find and destroy.

karp773 6mo ago

Downvoters, care to explain? Seriously, it's been sitting on this for entire month and now, all of a sudden, rolled out antiaircraft defense? What's going on?

standardUser 6mo ago
We don't know what downed it yet, so it's hard to say. Iran is hiding and rationing their offensive munitions, we know that, so it's not surprising when the number of drone and missile attacks spikes after weeks of bombing. That's part of the plan. But the ability to take down a US fighter jet is not something they are rationing- it's likely at the edge of their capabilities and they got lucky. If they could be knocking down more, they would be.
ranger207 6mo ago
Air defense is not static. Even fixed launchers can be moved, and reacting to how your enemy is operating is an important part of air defense tactics. The famous F-117 shootdown happened because the air defense operators carefully planned around how the US was using its aircraft. If most Iranian air defenses were destroyed in the first few days, it'd make more sense for them to hold whatever was still available for the sort of situation where they had much higher chances of scoring a kill than just throwing it out there to get destroyed immediately and accomplish nothing.
solid_fuel 6mo ago
If you want a real explanation, this is how defensive wars against an overwhelming opponent are fought. Iran knows that they can't build an iron-clad air defense perimeter, there still isn't a reliable answer against stealth aircraft and cruise missiles. They never had a chance of shooting down every plane that enters their airspace, and that isn't their goal. Instead, they will fight this war by absorbing blow after blow, hiding their capabilities and striking back when it is advantageous. All Iran needs to do to win is: 1) Outlast the US air campaign - note this only requires protecting enough of their defensive capabilities to remain difficult. It does not require shooting down every US aircraft that enters their borders. It does not require shooting down most aircraft that enter their borders. 2) Prevent free shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. That's it. They just need to apply economic pain as domestic and international opposition to the unprovoked attack grows.