Iran’s attacks on Israel suggest ballistic missiles are an overhyped threat

• Israel and Ukraine have weathered repeated ballistic missile attacks.
• Ballistic missiles can strike with little to no warning time.
• Ballistic missiles are lethal but there’s plenty of evidence these weapons alone can’t win a war.

The fireworks were impressive. Explosions, flames, and fiery streaks across the sky.

But after launching hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel in two separate barrages, what has Iran to show for it? In the April attack — which comprised 300 missiles and drones — most were intercepted by forces from the US, Israel, Britain and Jordan. The October strike by 180 ballistic missiles saw a higher percentage of rockets penetrate defenses. Nonetheless, those that got through appear to have inflicted relatively minor damage: some craters, a partly collapsed school building, and multiple strikes on an Israeli Air Force base that is still operational.

Despite all the threats from Iran, Israel’s military, infrastructure, and public morale remain intact. This resilience has similarities with Ukraine, whose population has endured two years of Russian missile attacks but continues to fight on.

All of which raises a question: is the danger of ballistic missiles overhyped? The issue has become more important than ever. Fifty years ago, the US and the Soviet Union owned most of the world’s missile arsenal. Today, there are 31 nations that have ballistic missiles, plus non-state groups such as Hezbollah. With that much rocketry in the world, they are likely to be used in future wars.

The threat of ballistic missiles — which follow a ballistic trajectory, rising to the edge of the atmosphere or into space, and then falling like a cannon ball — dates back 80 years, to just before the dawn of the Space Age. In 1944, Nazi Germany unleashed the V-2, considered the world’s first guided ballistic missile. Nearly 3,000 V-2s were launched at targets in Western Europe, with about half aimed at Britain. The British public was no stranger to death from the air: they had already endured the bomber raids of the Blitz, and the V-1 buzz bombs that were the forerunner of today’s cruise missiles. But at least those weapons could be detected, giving time for people to take cover or air defenses to shoot them down. The V-2 was something different: ascending 60 miles to the edge of outer space, it slammed into its target without warning.

Hitler promised the German people that the “wunderwaffe” (wonder weapons) would bring victory. Instead, the V-2 consumed considerable resources yet neither damaged the enemy’s warmaking potential nor broke the population’s support for the war. One problem was accuracy. The Germans estimated that the circular error probable — a standard measurement of how close 50% of munitions land to a target — was almost three miles for the V-2. By 1945, US B-17 bombers had a CEP of a quarter-mile.

But the real problem was the payload. The V-2’s warhead was just one ton of high explosive, delivered by a weapon that could only be used once. A B-17 Flying Fortress carried four tons of bombs, a British Lancaster could drop seven tons — and these planes could fly dozens of missions. Granted that there was the expense — and the risk — to the crew. But the US and Britain were flying raids of a thousand bombers each: even if accuracy was far from perfect, the sheer number of bombs devastated cities and, towards the war’s end, hampered critical infrastructure such as oil refineries. Even this massive operation, however, failed to break German morale.

In the 1980s came the “War of the Cities,” when Iraq and Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles against each other’s urban areas. Despite tens of thousands of civilian casualties, morale in neither nation collapsed, and the Iran-Iraq War dragged on for eight years. In 2015, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen began a bombardment campaign against Saudi Arabia that included ballistic missiles. Though inflicting some damage on oil facilities, this was intended as political coercion against Saudi intervention in Yemen rather than an all-out attack on the kingdom.

It is not that conventional ballistic missiles aren’t lethal, especially the modern versions. The early gyroscopic guidance systems on the V-2 have been replaced by more accurate inertial guidance: a Minuteman ICBM has a reported CEP of about 130 feet, which is fine for a nuclear warhead but not for a precision strike on a small target. For advanced missile powers such as America and Russia, inertial guidance can be supplemented by other systems, such as GPS, and onboard radar linked to a map of the terrain. US-made ATACMS GPS-guided missiles, for example, have proven quite accurate in Ukraine.

Ironically, this can lead to what one expert has called the “precision paradox.” Accuracy doesn’t always equal effectiveness: if a smart bomb misses its target, then follow-on strikes to accomplish the mission can actually cause as much collateral damage as unguided weapons.

And therein lies the appeal of ballistic missiles for less technologically advanced nations and militant groups. Even if they’re not accurate, the mere threat of long-range missile bombardment might coerce or deter an adversary. With an estimated 3,000 ballistic missiles, Iran fields a variety of designs of varying accuracy, some based on the Soviet Scud or North Korea’s Nodong. Tehran claims its latest missiles have a CEP of around 65 feet, a suspect claim given the observed inaccuracy of some missiles in the April attack. A CEP of under 100 feet may be enough for damaging sprawling facilities such as airbases, ports and oil refineries. Against a pinpoint target such as a specific building, that might not be sufficient. And to get to that target, these weapons must get past increasingly capable air defense systems like Patriot, Aegis, Arrow and Iron Dome.

Even then, the question remains: Can ballistic missiles win a war? This echoes a debate from World War II, when Allied bomber chiefs argued that bombing German cities would win the war without the need for boots on the ground. Yet even after the Allies dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs in Europe, the Third Reich didn’t surrender until Allied tanks were in the streets of Berlin. Nor did over 7.5 million tons of ordnance compel North Vietnam to cease its war against South Vietnam.

Iranian missiles have not deterred Israel from pursuing its campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, nor are they likely to. Iran’s 3,000 missiles sound quite impressive. But even if they were all launched at Israel simultaneously, some would malfunction on launch, some would be intercepted, and still others — how many can only be guessed at — would miss their target. In the end, the amount of high-explosive landing on Israeli soil would be less than a single Allied bomber raid in World War II.

The proliferation of ballistic missiles is a danger. Given accurate guidance systems, they can damage vital targets. Given less accuracy, they can serve as terror weapons against cities. But they cannot win a war alone.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.