Iran’s Hypersonic Missile Attack Claims Dubious

What Happened?

Yesterday the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran claimed to have struck Israel with a hypersonic missile, which the group claims is capable of defeating Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. The attack followed a warning by Iran’s Supreme Leader threatening to launch hypersonic missiles against Israel.

Video footage of a burning hospital building in Israel was cited by the IRGC as damage caused by one of their Fattah-1 ballistic missiles, which is a two-stage rocket capable of reaching speeds more than MACH 13. 

Why it Matters

If true, the claims by the IRGC of using a hypersonic missile would mark an escalation of the war between Iran and Israel, which is now approaching the one-week mark. The problem is the video evidence is not consistent with damage a missile like the Fattah-1 would cause.

The Fattah-1 is approximately 15 meters long, weighs roughly nine tons (at launch) and carries a 450-kilogram warhead. A missile of that size traveling at speeds above MACH 5, which is the minimum threshold to reach hypersonic flight, would completely flatten a building of the size of the hospital shown in Israel with a direct hit. Even a near miss would likely cause complete structural failure of the building. 

Instead, the hospital shown in Israel is damaged but still structurally intact, suggesting one of two things. If it was a hypersonic missile, then the munition struck quite a distance from the building itself, or two, it wasn’t a hypersonic missile at all. In either case, the touted effectiveness of Iran’s Fattah-1 was not backed up by the evidence available from the most recent attack.

Iran does possess hypersonic missiles, though the exact number in their arsenal is unknown. Claims that Israel’s missile defense system can’t shoot down hypersonic missiles remain just that, claims. The Iron Dome system has shot down a surprising number of Iranian ballistic missiles, which travel at similar speeds and trajectories to hypersonic vehicles, suggesting it is possible for Israel’s defenses to intercept and destroy the Fattah-1.

The challenge for Israel’s missile defense system is not downing a single missile but coping with a swarm of incoming projectiles. Iron Dome can only track and engage a certain (classified) number of targets at a time, and if Iran sent a large enough swarm of missiles or drones it could overwhelm the defense system. That Iran has not done so since Israel attacked suggests that Iran’s capabilities have been seriously degraded by Israel’s airstrikes. 

How it Affects You

Iranian missiles, ballistic or hypersonic, pose a threat to nearly 40,000 American military personnel in the Middle East. If the United States directly attacks Iran, as the Trump Administration is currently considering, it would put American military personnel in the Middle East in immediate danger.