America’s CENTCOM says U.S. forces carried out a second day of strikes on Iranian targets, hitting about 90 sites after roughly 80 the previous day.
US forces struck multiple Iranian targets following a missile attack on a commercial ship.
On July 8, CENTCOM targeted IRGC radars, HQ-16, HQ-17AE and BAVAR missile facilities, and drone storage. The U.S. says it struck Iranian air-defence systems and a maritime traffic control tower during its recent operations.
U.S. officials have said they struck Iranian air-defence systems, and some defence reporting has specifically claimed that Chinese-made HQ-9B surface-to-air missile batteries and YLC-8B radar were among the systems destroyed in the April 2026 clash.
The U.S. military has confirmed strikes against Iranian air-defence sites, but it has publicly released a detailed inventory naming every specific system destroyed.
Reports identifying the destroyed systems as HQ-9B batteries come primarily from defence-analysis outlets, subsequent media reporting, and official U.S. battle-damage assessments.
Before these strikes, there was also uncertainty over whether Iran had actually fielded HQ-9B systems, with some analysts arguing earlier reports of Chinese deliveries were verified after the ceasefire started between the U.S. and Iran.
Why had Iran’s missiles failed so badly?
Iran has primarily relied on its ability to emulate and reverse engineer systems. This is largely because of global sanctions going back to the state’s inception in the 1979 revolution.
A significant portion of medium range air defence is vested in the Mersad, a low- to medium-range air defence system, which is a reverse engineered MIM-23 HAWK with some modifications.
These are fielded alongside indigenous designs including Ra’ad 1, Ra’ad 2, 3rd Khordad and Tabas systems.
For long-range defence, Iran has developed the Bavar-373 which has comparable capabilities to the Russian S-300. For short range air defence, the country has reverse engineered the Chinese HQ-7 as the Ya Zahr, and in 2021 the Zoubin system was unveiled.
Russian S-300, BAVAR and HQ-9 are plagued with EW weakness
Besides these copy cat systems, the country also leans on ageing Russian air defences, most notably the S-300PMU-2 battery.
However, Israel destroyed a significant number of these components in October 2024 and again during the 12-Day War the following year. Worse still, the Israeli Defence Forces learned all they can about the system in 2015 during joint air drills with Greece, which formerly operated its predecessor, the S-300PMU-1.
The exercise allowed Israel to develop comprehensive electronic warfare (EW) technologies specifically designed to compromise radars like those used with S-300 batteries: the Icebreaker missile and Haroop loitering munitions.
“The Israelis are masters at this,” said associate RUSI fellow Dr Tom Withington, speaking with Army Technology. “Remember, they’ve had the advantage of fighting Russian and Soviet origin air defence systems and larger integrated air defence systems… since the missile age, since the creation of Israel in 1947.
“Notwithstanding the three aircraft that we see lost to… friendly fire,” Withington continued, “the lack of losses so far as combat operations are ongoing really does underscore, I think, how efficient and how capable the EW effort, the cyber warfare effort of both countries has been at this point in the conflict.”
The US and Israel are among the few countries to develop and operationally deploy gallium-nitride (GaN)-based airborne EW jammers. These next-generation, wideband phased-array EW systems offer increased power, longer range, and directional jamming capability. They also feature cognitive artificial intelligence to support autonomous, real-time threat response.
In the ongoing conflict, the US would mostly rely on the recently operationalised AN/ALQ-249 EW systems developed by RTX while Israel, by contrast, would primarily deploy Rafael’s Sky Shield and IAI’s Scorpius SP (ELL-8222SB) escort jamming systems.
Particularly in the opening of the joint strike campaign, it is highly likely that the US repeated its electronic warfare [EW] tactics against Iran, just as US Special Forces had against Venezuela’s tactical variant of the same air defence system, the tracked S-300VM, two months ago.
“Much like their counterparts in Venezuela, the remaining [Iranian] S-300 batteries would be highly vulnerable to the EW capabilities of US and Israeli aircraft, particularly the F-22, F-35, and the EA-18G Growler, itself a dedicated EW aircraft,” Kaye considered.
At the same time, however, Iranian S-300 batteries most likely used an indigenous radar system instead of an original Russian one, which would offer inferior detection capability.
In using these indigenous radar components , Kaye continued, “operators of the remaining batteries would have needed to increase their radar power output, which in turn would have revealed their position and left them open to strikes from AGM-88 anti-radiation missiles, which is fielded by both Israel and the US.”
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