One of the most crucial elements of this war, and I don't think it's being discussed even remotely enough, is the question of munitions.
https://x.com/alon_mizrahi/status/1934378196105056682
One of the most crucial elements of this war, and I don't think it's being discussed even remotely enough, is the question of munitions.
You see, to launch this war the way it did, and defend against Iranian missiles, Israel has had to make extensive, intensive use of the most costly and rare types of munitions currently in use by any Western military: first, the THAAD and Arrow 3 interceptors, and, second, the kind of air-to-ground missiles that you shot from many hundreds of kilometers ways, if not thousands.
Both these kinds of weapons systems are extremely expensive to produce and also quite scarce. An Israeli source I've seen said that even the US doesn't produce more than a few hundred ultra-sophisticated interceptors a year. Even if Israel is capable of producing a couple of hundred more itself, Israel cannot reasonably have more than 2000-3000 interceptors of this kind on site and ready for use, or in stock. These are huge missiles costing millions of dollars apiece.
The cutting-edge standoff missiles Israel is using, for instance, America's AGM-158B, have only been procured in relatively small numbers: around 3000 of those have been produced for the US military so far.
Given an estimated stockpile of 3000 air-to-ground missiles and 3000 interceptors (both generous estimates), Israel may run out of suitable munitions in 10 days. With the Brits and French sending in everything they can spare, and the US resupplying Israel to the best of its ability, I would give Israel no more than 5-10 additional days tops with current use patterns.
Then it will have to start using infinitely inferior alternatives, to the extent that it even has enough of those (Israel always runs out of munitions within weeks, even when fighting Hezbollah and Hamas).
Iran, on the other hand, is most likely throwing first some of its older models to deplete Israel's interceptors. Once those begin to erode, with maybe a few batteries hit, then they can pull out their biggest, baddest weapons like the Khorramshahr-4, with a 1,500 kg warhead. For comparison, the destruction we've seen in Israel so far is the result of warheads 1/3 of this weight. We're talking entire city blocks or military bases evaporating in milliseconds.
In about 1 week, Israel is already going to be in acute distress.
posted by Satish Sharma at
04:32
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