Iran’s use of ballistic and cruise missiles, alongside uncrewed aerial vehicles, in its war with Israel and the United States presents similar, but also different, lessons to those being learned in the Russo-Ukrainian war. The lessons in each case, however, do relate to mass, both in offensive salvo weight and rounds required for defensive interception.
On 7 May 2026, even amid an agreed ceasefire in the US/Israeli war with Iran, US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that Iranian forces had attacked three US Navy (USN) DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM said the strikes included “multiple missiles, drones and small boats”; noted that no USN ships were hit, and added that CENTCOM forces had struck back against launch, command-and-control (C2), and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sites.
That same night the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) defence ministry said its forces were actively addressing a missile and drone attack by Iran.
Earlier in May, again during the ceasefire, Gulf countries reported Iranian strikes on energy resource infrastructure. According to the BBC, the UAE said ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz and an oil terminal at Fujairah had been targeted.
Contemporary conflicts are characterised by a combination of Cold-War-style mass, the post-Cold-War preference for precision, and the returning great power rivalry era’s pursuit of emerging and disruptive technologies. This mix is illustrated in both strike operations and the defensive response – the latter wrapping ballistic missile, cruise missile and uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) threats into an operational whole under integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) concepts.
Early on in its continuing, four-years-plus war in Ukraine, Russia initially fired large salvoes of ballistic and cruise missiles, along with bomb-laden UAVs, but on a more impromptu basis. However, four years on a war footing economically means Russia now has the production baseline to generate capacity to support the launch of large-scale salvoes almost nightly.
The latest conflict in the Gulf region has seen the two factions seek to generate similarly sustained high levels of strikes. Perhaps because Iran’s two adversaries are focused on quickly attritting its conventional capabilities, analysts do not see Iran as yet having developed sustainable strike capacity; nor having yet established a ballistic missile capability for precision targeting.
Iran’s strike output has still been extensive, however. In just over two years since April 2024, in four separate sets of missile exchanges with Israel, Iran has fired about 1,500 ballistic missiles and over 1,200 one-way attack (OWA) UAVs, Dr Uzi Rubin – a former head of Israel’s Missile Defense Organization, and an established international expert on Middle East missile technologies – told the Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI’s) annual IAMD conference in London in April.
“It’s quite a [level of] firepower,” he said.
Rubin’s analysis of the current conflict has focused exclusively on Iranian missile and UAV use against Israel, rather than its targeting of other Gulf states.
The four events in Iran’s exchanges with Israel – what are called Iran’s ‘True Promise’ series – illustrate some evolving operational patterns surrounding Iran’s ballistic missile, cruise missile and OWA UAV use in strike operations, Rubin’s analysis indicated.
For each instance, he detailed system numbers and types used.
In ‘True Promise 1’ on 14 April 2024 Iran launched 110 ballistic missiles and 220 OWA UAVs. Weapons were launched from multiple countries, including Yemen (courtesy of the Iran-backed Allah Ansar ‘Houthi’ rebels). At least three types of ballistic missile were used. UAVs launched included the Shahed-136 and its jet-propelled version: the Shahed-238.
Rubin said Israeli Air Force (IAF) data indicated that 96% of incoming ballistic missiles either failed, missed their targets or were intercepted, with only four impacting within Israel’s defended zones. All OWA UAVs were intercepted outside Israel’s airspace, he added.
‘True Promise 2’, on 1 October 2024, saw around 200 ballistic missiles launched. “This time the penetration was better,” with 36 impacts registering within Israel, Rubin said. This still left, though, according to Israeli figures, around 80% of the incoming missiles failing, missing targets or being intercepted, he added. Of note here was the use of relatively large salvoes numbering 50, 60, or 70 missiles, Rubin said. No UAVs were used, he added.
‘True Promise 3’, occurring from 13-25 June 2025 (the ‘12-day war’ between Iran and Israel), was the first of two more sustained events. As many as 564 ballistic missiles, around 1,000 OWA UAVs and one possible cruise missile were launched. These strikes also included the Yemen-based Houthis launching a ballistic missile. Of note again, said Rubin, was Iran’s use of ballistic missile salvoes. As regards effectiveness, around 60 missiles struck Israel, including in undefended areas, with the IAF claiming an 86% defensive success rate. Rubin noted also that only two impacts were reported from the 1,000 or so UAVs, indicating a high level of interception.
The ‘True Promise 3’ ballistic missile salvoes initially numbered around 40 rounds, but reduced over the 12-day period to including five missiles or less, Rubin told Warsight.
‘True Promise 4’ – Iran’s campaign in the latest war, beginning on 28 February 2026 and halting with the ceasefire on 8 April, and thus being the second larger-scale event – included the use of approximately 650 ballistic missiles, but only limited UAV numbers. In his RUSI speech, Rubin said 77 or so missiles – around 12% – impacted, with around 88% failing or being intercepted.
Regarding ballistic missile types fired, Rubin said Iran used a range of different liquid- and solid-fuelled systems across the four operations. His analysis also highlighted, perhaps more notably, two trends in the conventional payloads they carried.
First, he noted the use of heavy (400-600 kg) high-explosive unitary warheads, which proved capable of causing significant damage.
Second, and notable in ‘True Promise 4’ in particular, was the use of cluster sub-munition warheads on individual missiles, across the missile types used, with the cluster packages numbering between 24 and 80 submunitions per missile. Of the 77 that impacted, 64 carried cluster warheads, Rubin said. While the lethality of submunition warheads is relatively lower, their dispersal, including from different altitudes, complicates defensive operations.
Most of these submunitions were fin-stabilised bomblets, carrying around 20 kg of explosives, Rubin told Warsight.
The ‘True Promise’ strikes were also aimed at a broad range of military and civilian targets across the country and in major cities, Rubin told the RUSI audience. Targets attacked included IAF bases; C2 and intelligence sites; Ben Gurion international airport; oil refineries and other energy resource infrastructure; industrial zones; and universities and academic institutes.
Rubin said that energy infrastructure targets may have included Israel’s offshore resource platforms in the Eastern Mediterranean, as the Israeli Navy claimed to have shot down 30 UAVs.
Rubin added that Iran has demonstrated the capacity to target key areas like air bases and industrial complexes and is looking to develop a ballistic missile precision-targeting capability versus particular targets. The strikes showed Iran’s progress towards this aim, but it is not yet there. It does, though, have the targeting capacity to use OWA UAVs with precision effect.
In Israel’s defensive operations against the four strikes, Rubin explained that its response was multi-layered and included different system combinations. For upper-tier air defence land-based defensive systems included Israel’s Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 systems and the US Army’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The lower-tier set-up included Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems, which were focused on the UAV threat in particular. Air-to-air interception, including at distance, was crucial in defending against UAVs, especially Shahed-136s and Shahed-238s.
Sea-based defensive layers included USN Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) surface-to-air missiles and Israeli Navy SAR-6 corvettes carrying the Sea Dome missile defence system (a navalised Iron Dome).
The most cost-effective counter-UAV options involved electronic warfare (EW) capabilities and helicopter gunship interceptions.
Rubin underlined two developments here. First, within what he characterised as ‘offensive defence’, the IAF and US forces conducted pre-emptive strikes against Iranian mobile ballistic missile launchers.
Second, for ‘True Promise 4’, Israel qualified the lower-tier David’s Sling capability to target ballistic missiles. “This tremendously increased magazine depth because it cost about almost one order of magnitude less than an Arrow-3,” said Rubin, adding that reduced costs can support higher manufacturing rates.
Rubin pointed to a couple of patterns in Iran’s targeting of its missiles against Israel.
First, in ‘True Promise 1’ and ‘True Promise 2’, Iran launched all of its weapons using a small number of very large salvoes, with all of these conducted within a roughly 15-minute timeframe.
The emphasis on a limited number of large-scale, initial strikes continued in ‘True Promise 3’ and ‘True Promise 4’. However, with these two events being extended campaigns, more missile salvoes were routinely fired beyond the first two or three days, although these tended to involve much smaller missile numbers, Rubin explained.
“This is more a tactic of ‘scoot and shoot’,” he said, although adding, “It’s easier to observe, detect and track a smaller salvo than a bigger salvo.”
Second, one question in relation to understanding why missile numbers per salvo may have tapered off was whether Iran had sufficient ‘magazine depth’ to sustain fire, Rubin said. Looking at sustainability across day 1 to day 35 of ‘True Promise 4’, for example, following the large salvoes of the first two or three days, numbers then tapered down to between 10 and 20 per day, while also using smaller salvoes of perhaps two missiles.
This raises the question of whether Iran has the industrial capacity for producing the required missile and UAV numbers. Such a capacity would, of course, be a primary target for adversary attritive strikes.
In the Ukraine war, both protagonists appear broadly focused on using both missiles and UAVs, while Iran’s four events have been notable for the fact that only ‘True Promise 1’ and ‘True Promise 3’ involved large numbers of UAVs.
“One conclusion is that OWA UAVs played a much lesser role in this case than the Ukraine war,” Rubin said. While stating that the reasons for this should be researched, he reiterated that “the drones played a relatively minor role”.
Yet, around the latest conflict in the Gulf region, in Israel’s extended, spillover clash with Hezbollah across Lebanon, UAVs featured prominently, Rubin added.
It is worth noting that Iran initially supplied large numbers of OWA UAVs to Russia, prior to Russia developing its own build capacity. This initial supply may have reduced Iran’s own reserves of OWA UAVs.
As in Ukraine, magazine depth has been an issue, in both missile and interceptor contexts. “Missile wars are a battle of attrition, and magazine depth is a crucial factor,” Rubin noted. Thus, he added, “We, the engineers, should learn that cheaper interceptors, even if they are less effective, are preferable to sophisticated gold-plated ones.”
