Cross-Post: Newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, and posts can only appear in one section/newsletter at a time. Posts may, however, be relevant to more than one region/section/newsletter.
In a recent post focusing on Iran, which is part of the Defending Iran Project, I borrowed the concept of (submarine) indiscretion rates to examine how Iran can enhance the survivability of its ballistic missile arsenal going forward. Israel and, more recently, the United States, have demonstrated their considerable capacity to locate, track, and target Iran’s mobile ballistic missile launchers once these leave the safety of Iran’s underground missile bases.
There are important lessons here for Russia, as well as NATO countries facing Russia, notwithstanding the very limited attrition that the wheeled launchers associated with Russia’s Iskander-M ballistic missiles and Iskander-K cruise missiles have thus far experienced in the Russia-Ukraine War. Notwithstanding the ongoing qualitative and quantitative growth of Ukraine’s strike capabilities in terms of strike munitions of various types, Ukraine remains far less capable in this capability area than NATO as a collective, largely on account of the formidable state of American military capabilities, including some of the capabilities on display over the course of the 2026 American and Israeli war against Iran.
It bears emphasis that while Ukraine possesses a diverse array of affordable low-cost strike munitions, it has a limited number of primarily foreign-built and supplied high-speed/short time-to-target strike munitions, which it will require to target mobile Russian strike munition launchers such as those in the following images. Ukraine also lacks an air force that can both penetrate Russian airspace and loiter in the area of suspected strike munition launch activity to hunt for Russian strike munition launchers in the manner that Israel and the United States have undertaken against Iran.
Western Russia does not feature the rugged mountainous terrain found across much of Iran, and Russia is, therefore, unable to turn to hardening to enhance the survivability of its conventionally-armed strike, including but not limited to the Iskander-M and Iskander-K. This poses a particularly difficult challenge for Russia in Kaliningrad and around the Kola Peninsula. Given the current trajectory of technological advances, not least in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War, and the increasingly widespread adoption of lower-cost strike systems on the part of European NATO countries, including the types of designs that are being used by Ukraine, Russian strike systems including but not limited to Iskander-M and Iskander-K launchers will likely face very major risks going forward when deployed within 100-300 kilometers of NATO territory, and major risks over greater distances. All things considered, technological change is having the effect of depriving Russia of the relative security that it has long enjoyed in its “rear” on account of its so-called strategic depth. Russia may not be able to fully emulate the (imperfect) Iranian approach to basing and operating strike munition launchers, but there are aspects of the Iranian experience that Russia may well emulate.
