Iranian Missiles

Well the Iranians have retaliated. The reports vary but they fired at least 15 to 30 missiles, of which at least 10 struck an airbase 100km west of Baghdad. The Ayn al Asad airbase is also the largest American military base in Iraq. At least one missile struck another military base in the Kurdish area of Erbil.

No reports of casualties or damage are coming out yet. The Iraqi government is also silent on this attack on their soil.

In October 2018 the Iranians did fire SIX ballistic missiles into Syria. The missiles flew over 800km to accurately hit ISIS targets inside Syria. It was a show of Iranian missile capability.

Here are a few short videos about Iran's missile capabilities.  

The Iranians have been quite successful with their missile programs. They have an almost complete spectrum of missiles and rockets. Liquid fueled, solid fueled, ground to ground missiles, ground to air missiles (anti aircraft), medium range and above medium range ballistic missiles (3000 km) and long range cruise missiles. They also have anti ship missiles including a 1,000 km range anti ship missile. Iranian missile technology has been used in Yemen to hit Saudi navy ships. 

Plus a sizeable variety of anti tank missiles, shoulder launched missiles, short range missiles etc.

In these videos do note a few things :

1. Their missile inventory levels - they seem to be shooting, transporting and have in storage a huge number of fairly large missiles. This means they have the industrial infrastructure to manufacture and assemble rocket engines, electronic guidance system including computer hardware and software and not to forget the rocket fuel needed to put these birds up in the air. Solid fuel and liquid propellants.

2. The very large number of trained personnel you can see in the videos who can manufacture, maintain and shoot these missiles.

3.  The missiles are being fired from mobile launchers and from underground sites. Plus they also seem to have launch sites tucked into hillsides and mountainous terrain - all of which make detection very difficult.  They have also developed massive underground assembly and storage facilities. This is a formidable capability.