The United States alone struck more than 13,000 targets across Iran and established localized air superiority in most of the areas it operated – so how were jets like the F-15E Strike Eagle and A-10 Warthog still vulnerable to being shot down? And why wasn’t the U.S. relying on more survivable stealth aircraft, like the F-35, in places where the threat remains?
The answer has a lot to do with the limitations of airpower on the modern battlefield, and the types of technology Iran is employing to continue increasing the war’s cost in the minds of lawmakers and the public.
Iran’s most broadly capable and dangerous integrated air defense assets, like the Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries and the domestic equivalent Bavar-373, have seemingly been destroyed or suppressed.
The powerful radar arrays these systems rely on for long-range targeting work by broadcasting radar waves, and then reading how these are bounced back. To destroy them, American aircraft use weapons like the AGM-88 HARM, or High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile, to hone in on those broadcasting radar arrays, chasing that electromagnetic energy the same way an infrared-guided missile chases heat.
Taking these kinds of systems out is paramount to establishing air superiority and makes it feasible to fly more freely inside enemy airspace for both stealth and non-stealth jets alike. But even once you’ve taken out all the long-range threats and neutered the enemy’s ability to scramble fighters against you, there is still a lot left to an adversary.
Once the major air defense threats have been wiped out, fighters can be tasked with hunting hidden weapon systems, which often means flying at lower altitudes and airspeeds.
However, Iran is a very large country – about 2.5 times the size of Texas, and 2.7 times that of Ukraine – meaning it has a lot of territory to hide its weapon systems.
Further, Iran has been preparing for an asymmetric conflict against the United States for decades, giving it ample time to distribute and hide all kinds of air defense assets, especially small, shoulder-fired missiles like Man Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADS.
MANPADS are extremely limited in both engagement range and altitude. For example, Iran’s domestically produced Misagh-1,2, and 3 series offer maximum ranges of only about three to five miles, and maximum engagement altitudes of under 13,000 feet. These weapons are only about four feet long, weigh a total of around 37 pounds, so can be easily hidden from prying eyes in the sky until the targeted aircraft is right overhead.
Because they use infrared guidance, which doesn’t broadcast any detectable electromagnetic energy like radar waves, there’s no way for a pilot to know they’re being targeted from the ground. The first notice a pilot might receive is an alert from their onboard missile approach warning system that would detect the infrared spike of the weapon’s launch.
Yet, a MANPAD like the Misagh-3, travels at around Mach 2.9, meaning there would only be seconds between launch and impact when used at these ranges.
And while stealth fighters are much more survivable against high-end threats like those S-300 batteries, when flying at low altitudes to hunt for Iranian weapons, the F-35’s massive Pratt & Whitney F135 turbofan engine makes for a very detectable infrared target at low altitudes. That’s why we’ve already seen an F-35 getting directly hit from a MANPAD earlier in this conflict.
Therefore, after localized air superiority is established, the danger remains. It just means flight operations can shift from high altitude suppression of air defense operations to a lower-altitude game of whack-a-mole against pop-up threats.
Military aviation is an inherently dangerous enterprise and there’s no such thing as a combat sortie without risk, no matter how big the technological overmatch.
Feature Image: Iranian troops use a Misagh-1 MANPADS during training exercises, December 2022. (Photo by Mahdi Marizad/Fars News)
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