Hezbollah's missile threat: Outdated yet costly for Israel
While the IDF operation continues, Hezbollah fighters persist in launching rocket attacks on Israeli territory, even utilizing ballistic missiles. Here is an overview of Hezbollah's most powerful weapon.
10:31 AM EDT, October 27, 2024
Hezbollah fighters are notorious for bombarding Israeli territory with rockets and drones, but recently, more ballistic missiles have been appearing. Below, you can see the launch of a Qader-2 missile, a variant of the Iranian Zelzal-2, from a deeply buried underground bunker somewhere in Lebanon.
Such missiles are currently unnecessary for Iran as their range is estimated to be about 125 miles. This is insufficient for Iran's needs but adequate if launched from Lebanese territory. For example, the distance between Tel Aviv and Beirut is approximately 130 miles.
Zelzal-2: A modified reincarnation of Soviet-era missiles from the 1960s
Iran has been supplying these missiles to Hezbollah since the early 2000s, according to Nicholas Blanford, who details the acquisition process through Syria in his book "Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah’s Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel."
Structurally, these are unguided ballistic missiles derived from the Soviet Luna-M. The Zelzal-2 is a missile with a caliber of 24 inches and a launch weight of 7,500 pounds, capable of carrying a warhead weighing up to 1,300 pounds. Such a large payload is necessary because of the very low accuracy, which allows for targeting effectively only entire neighborhoods in cities.
These were among the first Iranian ballistic missiles developed in the 1990s, making them practically obsolete and significantly inferior to the newer arsenal. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Iran decided to "scrap them in combat" through Hezbollah's operations.
Nevertheless, these old missiles pose a significant problem for Israel, as intercepting such a missile requires deploying the Arrow-3 or David’s Sling anti-ballistic system, where the cost of a single interceptor missile is a few million dollars. This tactic aims to deplete the stock of interceptor missiles critical to the Israeli missile defense shield, also supported by the American THAAD system and destroyers equipped with SM-3 missiles.
Iran has already attacked Israel twice with dozens of ballistic missiles, and following the last Israeli retaliation, it is expected to do so a third time with an even greater number of ballistic missiles.
