For many Israelis, the first days of fighting with Iran have felt like a resumption of the June war: their days and nights interrupted by sporadic rocket warnings, familiar scrambles for shelter, and the sounds of thunderous interceptions or earth-shaking booms when a missile or shrapnel impacts.

Yet Iran’s launches in response to Operation Roaring Lion since Saturday have been notably different from previous rounds’ large barrages, experts say, though there is no consensus regarding what factors lie behind the shifts in size and timing and whether they reflect Tehran’s degraded missile capabilities or simply different tactics being employed.

During the June war, and in two previous attacks, Iran fired dozens of missiles at a time, using the numbers to try to overwhelm Israel’s air defenses. This time, the Islamic Republic has seemingly largely limited itself to a few missiles per attack, though the Israel Defense Forces has refrained from providing specific details on the number of missiles fired in each volley.

“We didn’t see salvos until [Monday],” Tal Inbar, a veteran expert in aviation policy, space and missile issues, told The Times of Israel.

In the June conflict, which caught Iran flat-footed, the Islamic Republic eventually responded with two large barrages totaling 150 missiles between them. Subsequent days saw more large barrages, which petered off toward the end of the 12-day conflict.

On Saturday, the first day of the current war, Iran fired even more missiles — around 170 in total — but spread them in smaller salvos of two or three missiles at a time rather than concentrated in large opening salvos. The volleys targeted not only Israel but also Gulf states and American bases in the region.

Though each launch consisted of only a few missiles, they came in relatively quick succession, in contrast to the longer periods of respite between launches experienced in the June war.

According to Inbar, the shift in tactics could stem from several factors, ranging from strategic decisions within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Israel’s established air superiority over Iran.

Other analysts argue that Iran’s altered launch tempo may also reflect changes in the US-Israel offensive against Tehran’s missile infrastructure.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Iran program, noted that, unlike in June, Israel and the US are now targeting not only missile launchers but also production and support facilities. That means Iran is more concerned about conserving what missiles it has, knowing it will be difficult to produce more.

“The Israelis and the Americans are now destroying the facilities that exist on the western side [of Iran], which are the ones that allow them to strike furthest west,” Ben Taleblu said on the FDD Action platform. “The destruction of these bases builds on the targeting logic that we saw in the 12-day war because rather than just go after the archer and have to defend against the arrow, this collapses the facility to rob the regime of both the archers and the arrows that it has.”

According to Can Kasapoglu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, with the US taking part in the bombing campaigns Iran was losing launchers and missiles at a faster rate than in June.

“The US and Israel have increased their operational tempo and sortie rates to destroy missiles and launchers before Tehran can use them,” he wrote.

He noted that Israeli fighter jets carried out more than 700 sorties in the first 36 hours of fighting.

It’s unclear whether Iran has kept up the same pace of rocket fire as it did on the first day, but attacks have continued to trigger alerts every hour or two, and sometimes launches targeting different parts of the country appear to be staggered by just a few minutes.

As in the June war, each attack triggers alerts over wide swaths, though the number of towns under missile warning gives no real indication as to the number of incoming rockets.

Despite the smaller size of the volleys, more towns have come under more alerts per day in the current conflict than during the first four days of Iranian missile fire in June. Still, the number of direct impacts by missiles managing to break through the defenses has been smaller.

According to Inbar, a slowdown in the number of missiles fired daily will likely signal that Iran is running low on stocks and seeking to preserve stockpiles for later stages of the conflict — but, he emphasized, “it’s too early to call.”

On Monday, Iran seemed to shift its strategy somewhat, according to the Home Front Command, which said that the military had assessed that the IRGC was attempting to carry out larger and more coordinated ballistic missile salvos — consisting of nine to 30 missiles at a time — resulting in longer lulls between attacks.

However, the IDF said it believes Iran is struggling to coordinate the larger attacks involving dozens of missiles at once, as the Israeli Air Force continues targeting and hunting down launchers, making it difficult to muster enough launchers for a coordinated attack.

“All the air activity over Iran designed to thwart missile launchers and hunt them — by both the US and Israel — makes it difficult for Iran to increase its launch rate,” Inbar said. “The hunting activity carried out over Iran deprives Iran of launchers — every launcher destroyed will not be replaced.”

Decker Eveleth, an associate research analyst at the US-based CNA think tank, said the ability to launch large volleys was also hampered by difficulties coordinating such complex attacks. According to the IDF, 40 senior Iranian leaders, including many top military commanders, were killed in the opening minute of the war.

“Unlike the 12 Day War in which Iran used a certain segment of its missile force to retaliate in distinguishable waves, this is complete chaos,” Eveleth wrote on X. “Many missiles across many fronts, potentially with units acting without centralized authority.”

Still, Inbar cautioned that it remains too early to determine whether the smaller daily launch totals reflect operational constraints or deliberate conservation.

“I think that even with the degradation of Iran’s missile bases and so on, they might be able to fire — if not the last rounds of the war — at least until the end,” he said.

There is no official public data on Iran’s current missile stockpile, though the IDF has assessed it at roughly 2,500 ballistic missiles.

Aside from firing large sorties, Iran also has the ability to launch missiles carrying cluster bomb warheads, though as in June, it has used these sparingly. Several have landed in Israel over the past few days, with an unknown number having been shot down.

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While cluster warheads are less destructive and deadly than standard ballistic missile payloads, Inbar said they present a different operational challenge by separating high in the atmosphere and dropping dozens of small bomblets over a wide area.

“It’s a threat because it spreads over a very large area. So the game is to intercept it before it separates,” he said.

The bombs are too small to be knocked down by interceptors, though they also pack a smaller punch. In some cases even a simple roof — not necessarily a reinforced bomb shelter — can mitigate the impact, Inbar said.

Iran has also claimed to have used the Fattah-2 hypersonic glide missile for the first time during the current conflict, according to unverified Iranian reports. Inbar dismissed the claim as likely false, noting that the Fattah-2 is still in development, but said such a development would indeed test Israel’s air defenses

“A real hypersonic missile is, of course, a threat, and it’s a challenge for any interceptor,” Inbar said, noting that such weapons travel at extremely high speeds while maneuvering unpredictably during flight.

Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, which follow a more predictable trajectory, hypersonic glide vehicles can alter course mid-flight and fly at lower altitudes, compressing response times and complicating tracking calculations.

“I don’t see any evidence that Iran launched even one hypersonic missile,” he added.

Taking stock of interceptors

In the months leading up to the recently renewed fighting, speculation swirled over whether Israel was prepared to withstand sustained ballistic missile fire, amid reports that both Israeli and American interceptor inventories had been significantly depleted during last year’s war.

According to The Wall Street Journal, during that conflict Israel had run low on Arrow missile interceptors — a sign of the strain intense fighting had placed on its air defense systems.

Reports published after the June conflict claimed American forces expended roughly a quarter of the US military’s THAAD interceptor stockpile over the 12-day conflict, firing between 100 and 150 THAAD interceptor missiles — each costing an estimated $12.7 million — while helping to intercept roughly 500 missiles launched by Iran.

Production of interceptors — which require lengthy assembly and rigorous testing cycles — significantly constrains how quickly stockpiles can be rebuilt after intensive use, raising questions about readiness for the renewed confrontation.

Like much else regarding the specifics of air defense operations, Israel does not publicize the number of interceptors it has.

“The exact number is classified. We don’t know,” Inbar said.

However, he was confident that military planners took stockpile levels into account when plotting out the current war.

“I believe that the amount of interceptor missiles was something that was taken into consideration in both the US and Israel,” he said. “The operational plans took into account the length of the campaign and [Israel and the US’s] capabilities of not just intercepting missiles, but also preventing strikes by hitting locations in Iran.”

The only way Israel’s interceptor stocks could become a factor, according to experts, is if the war went on far longer than expected and Iran continued to have access to large numbers of missiles that managed to avoid being destroyed by Israel.

Indeed, Iran’s ability to manufacture missiles was one of the main reasons Israeli and American leaders have given for launching Roaring Lion/Epic Fury.

Shortly after Israel launched strikes on Iranian leadership and infrastructure, the IDF said the regime had been producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles per month and had sought to expand output to several hundred monthly.

But Inbar cautioned that such missile production numbers were likely overblown in any case.

“I don’t know of any country who is capable of producing so many ballistic missiles,” he said of the high-end estimates. “Nevertheless, they do have a lot.”

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