one issue was internal sabotage and lack of competent counterintelligence to prevent spies taking out key radars
I mean in case of Isfahan airbase TP-1 attack by Israel, the S-300 radar was in LOS via some fields nearby or even major highway. So stationing air defenses in areas where a simple crew can fire a few drones at it, is gross incompetence. Even Israel struggled against nearby HZ crews on the border hitting sites. Distance reduces reaction time and counter response,
The fact there was no anti drone systems deployed or EW systems to stop drones was again gross incompetence. Iran never even developed a cheap alternative to protect its radar sites or missile sites which is an C-RAM like system. After all IRGC Quds force should have well aware how hard it was hitting US bases with this defending them. Something well within Iran’s capabilities to build (basically a glorified CWIS with counter battery radar).
another was repeated OPSEC failures revealing location of key radars etc
I don’t put too much credence in this. Certainly not helpful, but You can detect radar radiation from space. Every war game Iran held, its radars would light up when doing air defense exercises.
It’s one reason why Iran was able to avoid Patriot systems during the armaco attack, radar radiation allows an enemy even like Iran to map out direction and range.
Unless you are constantly moving them around and changing configurations, you’re usually better of just building a denser ring. Even if enemy knows where your ring is and what compromises it, if it sufficiently dense enough it will not fail easily and repel the enemy properly.
A ring that is led by ONE Najam-804 is hilariously embarrassing. Especially given this ring is for natanz —one of the most important sites in all of Iran. And smacking an S-300 near by does nothing if that s-300 isn’t protected itself. Ukraine and Russia both have hit plenty of S-300’s that weren’t properly guarded with redundancy systems.
The fact is Iran doesn’t know how to build air defenses. It hasn’t learned since the IR of Iran was founded. It relied on F-14’s for so long to guard its skies.
another was lack of investment in sufficient AD systems (domestic or foreign) to cover Iran's large territory with sufficient redundancy
Which is curious, because Iran had the money. But instead it blew billions on arms shipments to HZ, Houthi’s, Syria, etc.
And in the end what did those systems bring it? Only the Houthi’s ever fired true inventory amounts. HZ only fired Grad rockets from Cold War and some ATGMs.
the reality is that just like the bulk of our missile forces are based on old generation liquid fuel MRBMs, the bulk of our air defences is based on Hawk and S-200 systems, and large parts of the east of the country have very limited air defence with major gaps ...
The reality is there was systematic corruption in the armed forces. This isn’t a country that spends $25b a year. Most of it is being laundered to the pockets of generals , companies, and politicians.
In America or China that is fine when they have budgets of 1T and 200B respectively. But in countries like Russia (60B) or Iran (20-30B) you get exposed.
