The confusion seems to be caused by the confusion between the number of boosters on the missile and the number of warheads.
No, the confusion is Iran had set up TELs numbering likely 75+ ready to fire because they had to anticipate the
event that Israel would attempt a massive counter strike or US got involved (regardless how unlikely). This is confirmed by Hajizadeh when he said that they had many more missiles ready in case things escalated.
But one of the most earliest western intelligence sources leaked that more than half of the missiles did not “fire” and cited them as “failing”. Which is misleading military talk, technically it’s true since they armed and “hot”, but reality is false. Thus my belief is they counted every missile that was armed and ready to fire that didn’t fire as part of the attack. Thus they were counted as interceptions even though they failed to fire.
Lastly I also think to your point they also counted boosters either by error (satellite infrared detecting launches) or on purpose.
if 2 / 8 were successful that means they intercepted 2 missiles not 1
Not necessarily true because standard operating protocol for both PAC-3 and SM-3 is to fire 2 missiles per target. So if both missiles hit they likely were hitting the same target. It’s possible each 2 Missile interceptor salvo failed to intercept their corresponding missile, then yes it would be 2 missiles.
well the US says half of them failed so c. 50 actually made it near Israel, of those c. 40 intercepted and the rest impacted. those numbers seem somewhat plausible (but on the high end)
More than half. And the devil is in the details, the report in fog of war said more than half “failed to launch”. My theory is they were counting the TELs on standby in case Israel did a major counter attack.
Of course iran didn’t have only 15-20 TEL teams ready because it takes time to pull TELs out of bases and pull teams to sites and call up crews.
Remember Emads and Qadr are liquid fueled and thus need to be Fueled prior to launch and that takes typically 45 mins-2 hours including the added surveying done by the celestial surveyor on these older missiles. Launch time varies depending on the generation missile that was used.
Furthermore, protocol is it fuel when at the launch site not at the base due to [obvious] safety concerns ie static discharge. Although it’s possible iran decided to skirt these rules to expedite the launch, but I think the fact the attack took so long was likely due to having to fuel all these missiles as contingencies. Fueling 100+ missiles likely took teams days working around the clock.
Thus logically they had to already be prepared to counter fire if Israel decided to launch a major attack no matter what the Intel showed prior.
I don’t believe that 50+ missiles were fired, we found all 3 Israeli boosters in Iraq, so failing in flight means Iraq and we would have had pics. Second everyone in Iran has a cellphone and we would have seen pictures or videos of massive salvos streaking over the sky’s of iran and southern Iraq like we did when Solemani attack was launched (we got a lot of civilian footage).
Yet during this launch it was very few and most were from Iraq.
So logically without booster evidence, without video evidence, and without official statements from IRGC, we cannot conclude that the launch happened as western propaganda (and IRGC complicity by remaining silent) say it did.
