I don't understand how modern war works. If you're going to war why are you not immediately taking out all their air defenses and air fields to gain complete air control? It's not like you can't spot where most of it is and deal with it in 1 switch strike. Same with stuff like boats trying to secure the sea. Why isn't America going gloves off and completely disarming Iran? Who thinks it's a good idea to play baby games like this instead of burning them to the ground?
Not all air defenses are the same.
At the upper end, you have shit like RIM-161, THAAD, maybe S-500(?), HQ-19, etc. these are basically specialized anti-ballistic missile platforms made to hit targets in fucking space (or at least the upper atmosphere) and also have anti-satellite capabilities. They are fuckhuge and unless mounted to a ship require massive radars that are loud and hard to move.
Just below that you have RIM-174, Patriot, Aster-30, and S-400/S-300 which can hit moving targets from hundreds of miles away, including both ballistic missiles and jet fighters, etc. but also require big loud radar to operate. They are more mobile than the anti-ballistic, but still require multiple vehicles with radar, command equipment, etc, and time to set up/take down.
Then you kind of have a spectrum of medium range into short range air defenses. Likely still using radar. They can hit targets roughly "within the same side of the county/city".
Lastly, you have your shortest, shortest range shit. This includes manually aimed or infrared aimed AA guns, shoulder fired missiles and other short-range passive infrared missile systems.
The advantage to these is they are cheaper, easier to move, easier to hide, don't let the enemy know they are being targeted, etc. The disadvantage is basically they can only hit targets right in their neighborhood, and usually at lower altitudes.
A good air defense is going to be a mix of all tiers as they all do different jobs.
A RIM-161 is going to stop a ballistic missile from impacting the presidents house, while a Stinger missile is going to stop a helicopter from landing 3 blocks away.
What has happened is the US (and Israel) has wiped out all of Irans bigger stuff (S-300, Bavar-373), most all of its medium stuff, but Iran might still have a lot of short range, low altitude stuff that's harder to seek and destroy - but does less to stop their assets from getting bombed day in and day out.
I reject that framing and I reject the idea that a bunch of faggot nerds can math and science their way
That's cool.
However, I reject your framing.
Yes.
