Comment by rainworld
70% of interceptors used were US. A whopping quarter of THAAD stockpile.
https://jinsa.org/jinsa_report/rising-lion-air-defense/
> almost no major hits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Military_Censor
> saturation attacks
They weren’t saturation attacks; in fact many were surprised by their small size compared to preceding True Promises. Unlike Israel, which had to tap out after 12 days, with a face-saving intervention by the US, Iran was in for the long haul.
> Missing something
Israel + US + friends had the highest density air defence network with plenty of interceptors and it wasn’t enough. They had all the time and space to operate without threat and yet by the end Iranian drones were hitting Israel. Given area and supplies and proximity, it’s just hopeless for Ukraine. Also, previously claimed interception rates were exaggerated.
You are massively downplaying the scale of the attack. Iran sent hundreds of missiles in a go. They had something like 1500 launchers so that was a major portion of their capabilities. Perhaps everything they could muster.
By the end the attacks tailed off, because they simply ran out of launchers and missiles. True their strikes got more successful as they started avoiding central israel, but it was more like a 5% hit rate instead of 1%.
At the end of the day the attacks led to a couple of dozen deaths instead of the predicted 500 to 2000. Irans entire command structure had been battered and they were desperate for an exit, even though it's true that Israel would have been unable to sustain the war for too much longer. In the end israel was able to shrug off everything that Iran could throw at it, at the same time as severely degrading their capabilities. I think a more accurate conclusions is that you need to combine air defence with intelligence and offense in order for it to work.
That 70% figure sounds wrong. I've seen wildly different numbers online. One thing is certain that hundreds of interceptors were fired. I would be surprised if just 2 thaad systems did the lions share of the work. That certainly doesn't match up to the claims of the IDF, and if it was true the Americans wouldn't stop boasting about it.