On 28th February, 2026, Iran launched Operation “True Promise-4,” a wave of ballistic missiles and drones into Israeli airspace. The strikes were in response to the US and Israeli attacks on Iranian territory, which saturated the most heavily protected skies until even success became unaffordable for their adversaries.

Iran went into the war with the most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, including the solid-fuel Fateh family, hypersonic-adjacent Fattah-1 and older Shahab-3 variants. It fired over one hundred heavy missiles in each wave; analysts called it “volumetric saturation”– overwhelming the target with more missiles than any interceptor network could handle. Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling and long-range Arrow defence systems had created the most multi-layered air-defence system ever deployed. However,

Israel had used approximately 81 per cent of its Arrow interception units before the war ended. This was not because of a failure of the system, but simply because there was no defensive architecture that can withstand such saturation for an extended period of time.

Israel had used approximately 81 per cent of its Arrow interception units before the war ended. This was not because of a failure of the system, but simply because there was no defensive architecture that can withstand such saturation for an extended period of time.

Iran’s more recent solid-fuel rockets, such as the Fattah-1 and Kheibar Shekan, were intentionally integrated with older, low-cost liquid-fuel missiles. This was not redundancy; it was design and strategy. The newer missiles do not technically qualify as hypersonic glide vehicles but have manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles which can jink at speeds over Mach 5 during the terminal phase, making it difficult to intercept by systems like THAAD and Arrow. Legacy missiles, meanwhile, tend to serve........

© Middle East Monitor