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| Israeli F-35I and F-16I |
On May 9th the
Iranian Quds force that belongs into the Revolutionary Guards Corps
launched a rocket salvo against the Israeli forces in the Golan
heights. The IDF had anticipated the move and placed several Iron Dome
batteries to protect the region, so the attack did very little damage and
several rockets were shot down.
There have been conflicting reports on whether the weapon used to attack Israel was a Russian built BM-27 Uragan or an indigenous Iranian Fajr-5.
The Fajr-5 system is an indigenous Iranian 333 mm
artillery rocket that is mounted on Mercedes-Benz 2624
trucks in 4-tube launchers. System has a maximum range of 75 km and
rather abysmal accuracy with a 3 km CEP. Combination of a 900 kg
class conventional warhead and the low accuracy makes the FAJR-5 more
of a terror weapon than any kind of precision battlefield instrument.
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| BM-27 Uragan (Photo: Russian Propaganda) |
The
Israeli Air-force had apparently been waiting for a provocation as
the resulting counterattack against the launchers and the Iranian
military infrastructure was an overwhelming one. Unlike in the
response for the February drone incident, the IAF was well prepared
with a large strike package that had a sizable SEAD element on hand.
While
nothing precise is known about the composition of the Israeli force,
it managed to force the Syrian army to turn on the air defense
systems Russia had supplied to it. The Syrian army managed to shoot
several of the longer range SAM:s against the IAF fighters, but none
hit their intended targets. The Israeli’s claim to have struck
against most Iranian installation in Syria.
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| Map of the Israeli strikes (IDF) |
The Israeli
SEAD element managed to destroy at least some of the SA-2, SA-22, SA-5 and SA-17 launchers
and radars during the engagement. It’s noteworthy that the SA-22
aka. Pantsir-S1 systems that are designed to act as a point defense
against cruise missiles were unable to defend themselves against the
limited number of Israeli munitions sent their way.
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| Pantsir-S1 (Photo: Spjutnik) |
The
Russian air-defense systems deployed to protect the Russian
expeditionary force in Syria didn’t engage the Israeli strike
package. It’s highly likely that Russia was informed about the
attacks in advance as the Israeli Prime Minister was visiting Moscow
on 9.5.2018.
It’s
interesting to see what aircraft the Israeli Air-force used in the
attack and that was the F-35I employed. This also casts a further shadow
of doubt over the Russian air-defense systems and their ability to
intercept coordinated attacks. On the other hand the level of
training and integration of the Syrian army might be too low to
effectively use these systems without direct Russian support.
It’s also interesting to see how the Russian-Iranian relations
develop as Russia doesn’t seem to be willing to protect Iran or
Syria from Israeli strikes. As an open conflict against a high tech nation like Israel could tax the limited number of advanced Russian weapon systems available for expeditionary ops, it's not surprising that the Kremlin seems to avoid that scenario.
As Iran seems to be unable to respond with a symmetric way against Israel, the next retaliation by Tehran is most likely an asymmetric one.
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