Despite 80% of Iran’s air defences destroyed, US and Israel still struggle to find small rail-launched 358 missiles
An Iran-made missile and its launchers during a rally in Tehran in 2025. Photo: AFP/ File
The number of Iranian missile launchers has remained largely unchanged despite a week of intensive airstrikes by the United States and Israel, highlighting the challenges of targeting small, mobile assets in a large country, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing Israeli and Western estimates.
Israeli Defence Forces officials said on Thursday that roughly two-thirds of Iran’s launchers were destroyed, a figure largely unchanged from the 60% reported last week. Two Western assessments also estimated 60% of launchers destroyed, with one adding that up to 80% of Iran’s overall offensive missile capability had been neutralised.
Mobile launchers are central to Iran’s ability to fire its large stockpile of ballistic and cruise missiles, but tracking the vehicles across Iran’s vast territory — especially when some airspace remains dangerous for US and Israeli aircraft — remains difficult. Tehran is reportedly adjusting its tactics to protect the launchers, according to analysts.
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“It’s likely that the Iranians are adapting tactics. It’s quite possible that they’re just preserving launchers by slowing down operations and focusing more on Shahed drones,” said Ankit Panda, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that Iran has launched more than 2,400 Shahed-136 rudimentary cruise missiles, alongside at least 789 ballistic missiles and 39 standard cruise missiles in recent weeks. Israeli estimates put Iran’s pre-war ballistic missile stockpile at up to 2,500 missiles.
US and Israeli strikes have aimed not only at Iran’s missile stockpiles but also specifically at launchers, creating a bottleneck to restrict missile use.
According to US Central Command, these efforts have led to an 80% drop in Iranian attacks using ballistic missiles and Shahed drones. The rate of ballistic missile launches at Gulf targets has stabilised at around 21 per day over the last three days, said Becca Wasser, defence lead at Bloomberg Economics.
Despite the destruction of as much as 80% of Iran’s air defences, Israeli officials said hard-to-find weapons such as the 358 missile, which can launch from small, easily concealed rail vehicles, continue to complicate operations. These missiles use infrared seekers and can patrol a fixed path until a target is detected, giving aircraft little warning.
The resilience of Iran’s mobile launchers underscores the difficulty of neutralising dispersed, agile missile platforms even in the face of sustained aerial bombardment.
