THE NEW AIR WAR
Iran’s Missile Tactics Expose Vulnerabilities of U.S. Air Defense
WASHINGTON -- American forces fired between 60 and 70 Patriot interceptors and more than a dozen THAAD interceptors to counter an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Jordan last week, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing U.S. and regional officials — a volume of interceptor expenditure roughly equivalent to what American forces typically use over an entire week at other points in the war.
The attack involved approximately 20 Iranian ballistic missiles. The exchange, as the Journal described it, demonstrated how air-defense calculations
can tilt in Iran’s favor — and how Tehran has adapted its tactics to force the United States to burn through its most expensive munitions.
What made the attack harder to defend against, officials told the Journal, was the nature of the warheads: Iranian missiles separated into multiple projectiles as they approached their targets, multiplying the number of objects U.S. defenses had to track and engage during the terminal phase.
Iran has been varying missile types, flight paths, speeds, and maneuvers rather than repeating the same trajectory, the Journal reported. Analysts cited by the paper said the changes appear aimed at complicating the calculations required by missile-defense systems to determine when and where to intercept.
Fabian Hinz of Conflict Armament Research told the Journal that Iran is using combat experience to refine its attacks.
“Every single combat use gives you some sort of data,” he said, explaining that Tehran can assess which maneuvers are effective and incorporate those lessons into subsequent strikes.
Iran is also layering its attacks — combining ballistic missiles with high-speed attack drones and less sophisticated missiles against the same targets, forcing U.S. forces to potentially expend multiple interceptors against a single assault.
Despite the defensive response, Iranian missiles reached Muwaffaq Salti Air Base near Azraq in Jordan. U.S. officials said an A-10 Thunderbolt II was hit and lost a wing, while roughly eight F-15 fighter jets sustained damage.
The Journal’s reporting comes amid growing evidence that the war has severely depleted U.S. interceptor inventories.
The New York Times reported in August that the Pentagon had fewer than 1,700 Patriot interceptor missiles remaining, with more than 1,500 already expended in the Iran war. Replenishing that stockpile could take more than two years.
Lockheed Martin produced a record 620 Patriot interceptors in 2025 and aims to increase annual output to roughly 2,000, but production bottlenecks persist.
A Pentagon Inspector General report released this week stated that the war has “resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and exposed defense industrial bottlenecks related to ammunition replenishment”.
The Journal’s findings align with recent analysis of Iran’s evolving missile configuration.
Media reported in August on a previously unseen hybrid design combining the Haj Qassem booster — a solid-fueled, road-mobile system from the Ministry of Defense — with the more advanced terminal-phase guidance of the Kheybar Shekan, developed by the IRGC Aerospace Force’s Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization.
The result is a missile that leverages the Haj Qassem’s greater propulsive energy with a warhead assembly that is more maneuverable and harder to intercept.
The integration of the Fattah-1 maneuvering reentry vehicle onto a Haj Qassem booster represents a combination specifically designed to complicate the engagement calculations of layered missile-defense systems including Patriot, THAAD, and the Navy’s SM-3.
Iran’s Air Defense Commander Brigadier General Alireza Elhami said this month that domestically produced systems that passed combat tests during the war are now being mass-produced and deployed nationwide.
He emphasized that Iran’s ability to upgrade both hardware and software without foreign suppliers gives it a significant advantage in adapting to new threats.
Iran has also retrieved missiles trapped in underground facilities during initial U.S. strikes and resumed production of new missiles using stored components, according to Arab and U.S. officials cited by the Journal.
The strain on interceptor stocks has forced the Pentagon to redeploy ships, aircraft, and air-defense units from Asia and Europe to West Asia — a move the New York Times said is having “cascading consequences” for equipment maintenance and troop morale. Some U.S. officials fear South Korea and Japan will doubt America’s ability to protect them.