Although Israel has made significant progress against Iran's ballistic missile apparatus, a dispute emerged on Thursday between different IDF sources regarding the extent of the progress.
Whereas one top IDF source said on Sunday that the air force had destroyed or neutralized 75% of Iran's approximately 470 missile launchers, on Thursday, another senior IDF source said that the percentage was only around 60%.
This is not the first time that the IDF has had trouble correctly estimating how much damage it caused to Iran's ballistic missile launchers.
During the June 2025 operation, some senior IDF sources said that two-thirds of Iran's ballistic missile launchers had been destroyed, and some said that the number was around 50%.
Either way, the IDF has certainly made progress against the regime's ballistic missile apparatus, with missile fire on Israel dropping from around 100 per day to around 20 per day to four or five per day on some days.
Eliminating remaining missile threats
However, to the extent that judging how many missile launchers and missiles Iran has left to fire on Israel is difficult, it also makes it more difficult for the air force to allocate resources to the right time and place, such that it can eliminate the remaining missile threats.
In one example, the IDF said that a water infrastructure area had been quiet for most of the nearly three-week war, and suddenly, a missile firing team emerged from the area to fire on Israel.
Iran's enormous size- around three times the size of France - has also made it hard for Israel to finish off the smaller missile teams after successfully hitting many of the larger missile command centers and staging areas in the early days of the war.
Iran divides its ballistic missile teams into 31 different zones.