It wasn't luck. Iran has a very modern and capable military, ranked above countries like Canada and Australia in strength.
Edit: wiki shows even lower tech ballistic style electromechanical guidance on their page. Thats 1960s tech.
Those missiles landed dead-center on buildings. (Seriously, look at the images!) This demonstrates an impressive operational capability to select which targets to destroy.
https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-prolif... claims "GPS/unknown"
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-s-ball... "improved the precision of the Fateh-110 guidance system, which uses both INS and Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) with a projected CEP of 250 m."
> Edit: wiki shows even lower tech ballistic style electromechanical guidance on their page. Thats 1960s tech.
The US still fields missiles with "1960s tech":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Minuteman-III...
I'm not so quick to dismiss these Iranian missiles. They seem to be accurate and able to effectively perform the job they were meant to do. It's a mistake to classify military technology as lower=worse/higher=better like it's a tech tree from a videogame. Inertial navigation systems like these missiles seem to have are actually superior to GPS in many circumstances that are relevant here. Yes, they drift, but that's not a huge issue over a short flight time. More importantly, they're self-contained, jam-proof, and don't rely on a service provided by an adversary.
Iran has a very backwards military with almost no air force and no serious navy power at all.
The few planes they have are mostly ancient and their navy consists of speed boats.
They have a thousand tanks that are a mixture of ancient and more modern tanks with medium capability compared to the US.
They have a large standing army that is moderately well trained, with some large elite forces, and they have good ballistic missile capabilities. They have almost zero ability to properly defend their territory from the US when it comes to air strikes. They have almost no ability to keep up a foreign strike outside of their borders, with their ballistic missile stockpile being their sole means. Basically they have almost no ability to sustain foreign strike capability via their military. Outside their borders they have numerous proxy terrorist organizations they fund persistently for asymmetric warfare.
That's all they have. They're an impotent military after decades of sanctions and grinding poverty. In a war context that of course doesn't mean the US would find invading to be easy (it would be a disaster), it means the US strategy would properly be to sit outside of their borders and destroy everything inside of Iran and never invade; acquire air dominance (would take one or two weeks max), and continue wiping out all infrastructure and military capabilities as needed.
If Iran had focused on developing the best tank force or air force possible, would it make a difference? No, Iran's most likely enemies are either the US or a country supplied by the US and the best Iran could produce would still fall short. They would certainly lose a conventional war.
So Iran has focused on developing asymmetric warfare capabilities. Their very large infantry and special forces mean any invading force will have an extreme insurgency problem to deal with, which could keep any enemy bogged down in a bloody and expensive war for literally decades. And their ballistic missile force can target important economic, military command or political targets, adding another significant deterrence.
Iran has been developing a variety of land-based anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles. Given that their naval interests are limited to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Sea of Oman (and the Caspian), that's probably enough naval power. Your air strikes are going to have to track down mobile launchers.
> and they have good ballistic missile capabilities
That's not a bad resource mix to potentially defeat the US Navy using asymmetric tactics:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a30392654/millenni...
>> Once U.S. forces were within range, Van Riper’s forces unleashed a barrage of missiles from ground-based launchers, commercial ships, and planes flying low and without radio communications to reduce their radar signature. Simultaneously, swarms of speedboats loaded with explosives launched kamikaze attacks. The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system—which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles—was quickly overwhelmed, and 19 U.S. ships were sunk, including the carrier, several cruisers, and five amphibious ships. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes,” Van Riper said.
> The problem? U.S. forces had expected Van Riper to sit back and come under attack, and then to launch a counterattack with his surviving forces, which could be easily brushed aside. Van Riper, who actually wanted to win the exercise, refused to sit on his hands and let the Americans attack first.
As you might guess, it has a slightly different view of what went down, and how representative it would be of a real conflict.
One of the most glaring issues in your quote is this:
> The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system—which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles—was quickly overwhelmed
This wasn't actually the Aegis radar that was overwhelmed, it was the system to simulate an Aegis radar for the purposes of an exercise. Actual Aegis systems don't seem to have the same problem.