Welcome back to another episode of My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother. It is February nineteenth, twenty twenty six, and the rain is finally starting to let up outside, but the geopolitical climate in our neighborhood remains as heavy as ever.
Herman Poppleberry at your service. It is good to be back at the microphones, Corn. There is something about the winter air in Jerusalem that makes these technical deep dives feel a bit more urgent, especially when we are talking about the things flying over our heads.
We have a really dense one today. Today's prompt comes from Daniel, who has been following our series on military technology. He wants us to dive into the Iranian ballistic missile arsenal. He specifically wants us to look at the history, the technical differences between supersonic and hypersonic weapons, and how the current missile defense systems like Arrow three and THAAD actually stack up against these threats in a real world scenario.
This is a perfect follow up to our discussion on bunker busters. It is one thing to talk about how the United States or Israel might hit a hardened target deep underground, but the other side of that coin is how those targets defend themselves and what they can throw back. The Iranian missile program is arguably the most sophisticated and diverse in the Middle East, and it did not just happen overnight. It is the result of forty years of trial, error, and some very strategic international "shopping," if you will.
Right, and Daniel mentioned the twelve day war and that intense feeling of having less than ten minutes of warning time. That is a terrifying reality for people living here. When the sirens go off, you aren't thinking about the physics; you are thinking about the nearest concrete wall. But before we get into the fear of it, let us look at the foundation. Daniel asked when this all started. Herman, was there a specific catalyst for Iran deciding they needed to become a missile superpower?
Absolutely. You have to look back to the nineteen eighties, specifically the Iran Iraq War. During that conflict, there was a period known as the War of the Cities. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, was launching Soviet made Scud B missiles at Iranian population centers, including Tehran. Iran had almost no way to retaliate in kind. They had a few missiles they had bought from Libya, but they were running out fast. That feeling of being defenseless while your cities are being bombarded from hundreds of miles away created a deep, strategic obsession within the Iranian leadership. They vowed they would never be in that position again. The man often credited with starting this is Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam. He is known as the father of the Iranian missile program, and he basically started by reverse engineering those Libyan Scuds in a garage like environment.
So it was born out of a perceived existential necessity. They started with those Scuds, which are basically nineteen fifties technology, but how did they move from just buying them to building their own? Daniel mentioned China, but I have heard North Korea was also heavily involved in those early days.
It was a bit of a three way collaboration, honestly. They started by reverse engineering the Scud B missiles they got from Libya and Syria, which they called the Shahab one. But the real leap forward came in the nineteen nineties through cooperation with North Korea. The Iranian Shahab three missile, which was their first real medium range ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel, is basically a direct descendant of the North Korean Hwasong seven, also known as the Nodong one. But while North Korea provided the initial blueprints and the heavy lifting on the engines, China played a very specific and critical role in the brains and the fuel.
When you say brains and fuel, are you talking about the guidance systems and the solid propellants?
Exactly. This is where the nuance of Chinese involvement comes in. While the Chinese government often officially denies direct military aid, there has been a steady flow of dual use technology and components from Chinese companies for decades. China provided the sophisticated telemetry equipment, the high grade graphite for nozzle vanes, and the guidance systems that allowed Iranian missiles to move from being "dumb" rockets that might hit a city to precision guided munitions that can hit a specific building. And perhaps even more importantly, China helped them master solid fuel technology.
Let us pause there for a second because that is a detail that might get overlooked by a casual observer. Why is solid fuel such a game changer compared to the liquid fuel used in those old Scuds?
It is all about readiness and mobility, Corn. Liquid fueled missiles are incredibly temperamental. You cannot store them with the fuel inside because the fuel is highly corrosive and volatile. So, if you want to launch a liquid fueled missile, you have to bring it out of its silo or warehouse, fuel it up on the launchpad, which takes hours, and during that time, you are a sitting duck for satellite surveillance or a pre emptive strike. Solid fuel is like a giant firecracker. It is stable. You can keep the missile fueled and ready to go for years. You can put it on the back of a truck, drive it out of a tunnel, and launch it in minutes. That is what makes the modern Iranian arsenal, like the Sejjil or the Kheibar Shekan, so difficult to preempt. They are "shoot and scoot" weapons.
That makes total sense. It turns the missile into a "plug and play" weapon rather than a massive laboratory project every time you want to fire. So they have built this massive infrastructure, they have got the precision from China, the base designs from North Korea, and they have been iterating on this for forty years. This brings us to the big technical question Daniel had: the difference between supersonic and hypersonic. We hear these terms thrown around a lot in the news, especially after the Iranian attacks in twenty twenty four, but the physics of it are where the real challenge lies for defense.
Right, and this is where people often get confused because technically, almost all ballistic missiles are hypersonic for at least part of their flight.
Wait, really? If a standard ballistic missile is already going that fast, why is everyone freaking out about "hypersonic missiles" as a new category?
That is the insight most people miss. To be classified as "hypersonic," a vehicle needs to travel at least Mach five, which is five times the speed of sound, or about thirty eight hundred miles per hour. A standard long range ballistic missile, when it is re entering the atmosphere from space, can be traveling at Mach fifteen or even Mach twenty. So by speed alone, they are already hypersonic. The difference, and this is the crucial part Daniel was asking about, is the flight path and maneuverability.
Okay, so help me visualize this. A traditional ballistic missile is like a fly ball in baseball. Once it is hit, you can calculate exactly where it is going to land based on its initial arc.
Exactly. It follows a predictable parabolic trajectory. It goes way up into space, reaches an apogee, and then falls back down. Because it follows that set path, our radar systems and computers can see it early, calculate the arc, and send an interceptor to the exact point in space where the missile is going to be. It is high speed, but it is predictable. A modern "hypersonic weapon," like a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle or a hypersonic cruise missile, is different. Instead of going way up into space, it stays much lower, often in the upper atmosphere. And here is the kicker: it can maneuver. It can zig and zag while traveling at ten thousand miles per hour.
That is the nightmare scenario for an interceptor. If I am trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, I can do that if the first bullet is moving in a straight line. But if the first bullet can suddenly turn left when I am expecting it to go straight, the math for the interceptor falls apart.
Precisely. And there is a second problem called the "plasma shield." When something travels at Mach five or Mach ten inside the atmosphere, the air in front of it gets so hot that it literally turns into plasma. This plasma can actually absorb or distort radar waves, making the missile "stealthy" even though it is glowing hot. So you have a weapon that is traveling at extreme speeds, staying below the horizon of long range radars for longer, and can change its destination mid flight. Iran claimed to have achieved this with the Fattah one and Fattah two missiles they unveiled in twenty twenty three.
I remember the Fattah announcement. They claimed it could bypass all existing missile defense systems. Was that just propaganda, or is there weight to it?
It is a mix. The Fattah one has a movable nozzle on its second stage engine, which allows it to change direction while it is still under power. The Fattah two is more of a glide vehicle. While Western analysts are skeptical that they have achieved the same level of sophistication as the United States or Russia, the reality is that even a "rudimentary" maneuvering warhead is significantly harder to hit than a standard one. It forces the defense system to use much more complex algorithms and reduces the "probability of kill" for each interceptor.
That really puts the warning time Daniel mentioned into perspective. If you only have seven to ten minutes from launch to impact, and for the first five minutes you are not even sure where it is heading because it is maneuvering, your window to react is almost zero. So let us talk about how we actually try to stop these things. Daniel mentioned Arrow three, THAAD, and David’s Sling. These are all part of a layered defense, but do they actually work against these newer hypersonic threats?
It is a game of cat and mouse, but the "cat" is getting very sophisticated. Israel’s defense is built on layers. At the lowest level, you have Iron Dome, which everyone knows, but that is for short range rockets and artillery. It is not for ballistic missiles. For the medium range stuff, you have David’s Sling. That is designed to intercept things like the Iranian Fateh series or heavy rockets from Lebanon. David’s Sling is actually quite advanced because its interceptor, the Stunner, has a dual seeker system—both radar and infrared—to help it stay locked on even if the target is trying to spoof it.
And then above that, you have THAAD and the Arrow system. These are the ones dealing with the big ballistic threats coming from a thousand miles away, right?
Right. THAAD, which stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is a United States system that is often deployed here. It is designed to hit missiles in their "terminal" phase—that is, when they are just coming back into the atmosphere. It uses "hit to kill" technology, meaning there is no explosive warhead on the interceptor. It just slams into the incoming missile with so much kinetic energy that it vaporizes it. But the real star of the show for long range defense is the Arrow three.
Arrow three is fascinating because it actually goes out into space to do the job. We saw it in action during the April twenty twenty four attacks, and it was the first time exo atmospheric interception was used in a real combat scenario.
It was a historic moment for military engineering. The Arrow three is an "exo atmospheric" interceptor. It leaves the atmosphere, finds the incoming missile while it is still coasting through the vacuum of space, and neutralizes it there. This is great for a couple of reasons. One, if the missile is carrying a chemical or biological warhead, you want it to explode in space, not over your city. Two, it gives you a much wider "protected footprint." One Arrow three battery can protect a huge area because it hits the threat so far away.
But here is the problem, right? If Arrow three is designed to hit things in the vacuum of space, it is looking for that predictable "fly ball" arc we talked about. If an Iranian hypersonic weapon stays in the atmosphere and maneuvers, is the Arrow three essentially useless against it?
Useless is a strong word, but it is definitely not the right tool for that specific job. This is the gap in current missile defense. Arrow three is for the high, space based threats. David’s Sling is for the lower, slower threats. But there is a "seam" in the middle—the upper atmosphere, between thirty and seventy kilometers up—where these hypersonic glide vehicles like to operate. They are too low for Arrow three and moving too fast and erratically for traditional surface to air missiles.
So what is the answer? Are we just defenseless against those?
Not necessarily. The next generation of interceptors, like the Arrow four, which is currently in development, are being designed specifically to handle these maneuvering threats. They will have much more powerful engines and their own high speed maneuvering capabilities. Also, there is a lot of research into directed energy weapons—lasers. Israel’s "Iron Beam" is the first step in this. A laser travels at the speed of light, so it does not matter how much the missile maneuvers; you do not have to "lead" the target the same way. But as of right now, in early twenty twenty six, we are still a few years away from having a laser powerful enough to take down a heavy ballistic missile at long range.
It feels like we are in this transition period where the offense has a temporary upper hand because of this hypersonic tech. But let us get to the most serious part of Daniel’s question. The payload. He asked if these missiles can carry nuclear weapons and if a portion of the Iranian arsenal is already equipped for that. This is the part that keeps world leaders up at night.
It is the ultimate question. To answer it, we have to distinguish between "nuclear capable" and "nuclear armed." Technically, many of Iran’s medium range missiles, like the Shahab three, the Ghadr, and the Emad, are "nuclear capable." This means they have the physical capacity—the internal volume and the weight lifting ability—to carry a nuclear warhead. If you can carry a fifteen hundred pound high explosive warhead a thousand miles, you can theoretically carry a nuclear device.
But having a missile that can carry the weight is not the same as having a warhead that can survive the flight.
Exactly. This is a massive technical hurdle that often gets glossed over. A nuclear warhead is a very delicate piece of machinery. When a missile re enters the atmosphere at Mach fifteen, it experiences extreme vibration, massive gravitational forces, and temperatures that would melt most metals. You have to "miniaturize" the nuclear device so it fits in the nose cone, and you have to shield it so it does not get crushed or fried before it reaches the target. This is what the intelligence community calls the "physics package."
Does the intelligence community think Iran has mastered that miniaturization and shielding?
The consensus, as far as we know from public reports and IAEA findings, is that they have done a lot of the math and the computer modeling for it. Documents recovered in the past, like the ones from the "Amad Plan" archive, showed that they were working on a spherical payload design that would fit inside a Shahab three nose cone. They even conducted tests on "Explosive Bridgewire Detonators," which are used to trigger a nuclear explosion. However, as of today, there is no public evidence that they have actually built or tested a functional, miniaturized nuclear warhead. They have the "bus"—the missile—and they are very close to having the "fuel"—the highly enriched uranium—but putting the "passenger" together and making sure he survives the trip is the final, incredibly difficult step.
So when people talk about Iran being a "threshold" state, that is what they mean. They have all the components on the shelf, but they haven't quite assembled the final product. But if they did, the combination of a nuclear warhead with a hypersonic delivery vehicle would be the ultimate "checkmate" weapon, wouldn't it?
It would be a total strategic game changer. If you have a weapon that can bypass most defenses and destroy an entire city in one hit, your deterrent power is absolute. That is why there is so much international pressure and why the missile defense race is so frantic right now. It is not just about stopping a conventional explosion; it is about ensuring that the "nuclear umbrella" actually holds. If the defense is only ninety percent effective against a nuclear threat, that is a hundred percent failure for the city being targeted.
You know, it is interesting to think about the psychological impact of this. In the nineteen eighties, the people in Tehran felt defenseless. Now, forty years later, the Iranian program has progressed so much that they have created that same feeling of "defenselessness" in their adversaries. It is a perfect, if tragic, historical circle.
It really is. And it shows that in modern warfare, the "shield" is always trying to catch up to the "sword." We saw this during the missile attacks in twenty twenty four. The success rate of the Arrow and David’s Sling systems was actually incredibly high—some reports say over ninety nine percent. But in the world of ballistic missiles, especially if we are talking about hypersonics or nuclear payloads, a ninety nine percent success rate might not be enough. If you launch three hundred missiles and one gets through, and that one is a "city killer," the defense has failed.
That is a chilling thought. So, for our listeners who are trying to process all of this, what are the practical takeaways? If we are looking at the next five to ten years, what should we be watching for?
I would say watch three things. First, watch the testing of the "Fattah" series and other Iranian hypersonic claims. Are they actually achieving sustained, maneuvering flight at Mach five plus, or is it mostly propaganda? There is a lot of debate among analysts about how much of their "hypersonic" tech is actually functional right now. Second, watch the development of Arrow four and the deployment of the "Iron Beam" laser system. The "shield" needs a technological leap to stay relevant. And third, keep an eye on the "breakout time" for their nuclear program. If the delivery systems are ready and the uranium is enriched, the only thing left is the engineering of the warhead itself.
It is a high stakes race. And it is not just about Iran and Israel. This is a global trend. Russia and China are already deploying hypersonics, and the United States is scrambling to catch up both on the offensive and defensive sides. The "predictable" era of ballistic warfare is ending, and we are entering this much more chaotic, high speed, maneuvering era.
It is a fascinating time to be a nerd about this stuff, but a terrifying time to be a citizen. I think Daniel’s question really hits on the heart of why this topic is so urgent. It is the intersection of ancient geography and futuristic physics.
Well, I think we have covered the ground Daniel asked for. We have looked at the history from the nineteen eighties, the role of China and North Korea, the physics of why hypersonics are such a headache for systems like Arrow three, and the grim reality of the nuclear payload question.
It is a lot to digest, but I hope it gives some clarity to the headlines people are seeing every day. These are not just "big rockets." They are the result of forty years of targeted, strategic engineering.
Exactly. And before we wrap up, I want to say thanks to everyone who has been listening and following along. We have been doing this for over seven hundred episodes now, and the engagement from this community is what keeps us diving into these deep dives.
Yeah, it is genuinely great to see the questions people send in. If you are enjoying the show and you find these breakdowns helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave a quick review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It actually makes a huge difference in helping other people find the show.
It really does. You can find all our past episodes and our full archive at myweirdprompts dot com. We have got an RSS feed there if you want to subscribe directly, and a contact form if you want to reach out. Or you can just email us at show at myweirdprompts dot com.
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Thanks again to Daniel for this prompt. It was a heavy one, but an important one.
Definitely. Until next time, stay curious and keep asking the weird questions.
This has been My Weird Prompts. We will talk to you soon. Goodbye.
Goodbye.
