When U.S. military aircraft fly low over the Persian Gulf or near Iranian coastline, the most dangerous weapons pointed at them are not the large radar-guided missile batteries that American strikes have targeted for months. They are shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles small enough for one person to carry and simple enough to launch in seconds, and defense analysts warn that Iran’s stockpile of these weapons remains largely intact despite repeated U.S. operations against Tehran’s air defenses.
The threat from infrared-guided missiles, particularly man-portable air-defense systems known as MANPADS, has sharpened a debate inside the Pentagon over whether current countermeasures can keep pace with a weapon that is cheap, mobile, and proliferating across the Middle East. As of spring 2025, multiple U.S. defense officials and independent researchers say the gap between declared American air dominance and the survivability of these low-altitude systems is wider than Washington has publicly acknowledged.
A weapon the U.S. cannot bomb away
MANPADS work by locking onto the heat signature of an aircraft’s engines. They are effective at altitudes below roughly 15,000 feet, which is exactly where helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft, and low-flying jets operate during close-air-support and surveillance missions. Iran is known to field several variants, including Russian-origin Igla-S systems and domestically produced Misagh-2 launchers, according to assessments compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Unlike fixed radar installations or large surface-to-air missile batteries, MANPADS can be hidden in buildings, moved by truck, or carried on foot through terrain that satellites and drones struggle to monitor continuously. That portability is what makes them so difficult to eliminate through airstrikes. A single operator can set up on a rooftop, fire at a passing aircraft, and relocate within minutes.
“The U.S. can’t stop everything that Iran fires,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in remarks reported by the Associated Press, even as he asserted American air superiority over the region. That concession from the official responsible for military readiness carries weight: it signals that risk acceptance, not risk elimination, is the operating framework for U.S. pilots near Iranian territory.
Countermeasures exist but fall short of full protection
The Pentagon’s primary answer to heat-seeking missiles is a technology called directed infrared countermeasures, or DIRCM. These systems, mounted on aircraft, detect an incoming missile’s infrared seeker and fire a focused laser beam to confuse or blind it, steering the weapon off course. A Government Accountability Office assessment of the Counter-MANPADS Development Program identified DIRCM as the most promising defensive approach, but that same review, published in the mid-2000s, flagged significant engineering hurdles and cost barriers that have slowed fleet-wide installation.
Two decades later, those barriers have not been fully overcome. The Navy’s Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures program, known as LAIRCM, remains an active acquisition effort, with ongoing contract solicitations visible on the federal procurement site SAM.gov. The continued spending confirms that the Pentagon does not consider the infrared threat a solved problem. But DIRCM systems are expensive, and not every aircraft in the U.S. inventory carries one. Helicopters and smaller transport planes, the platforms most vulnerable to MANPADS at low altitude, are often the last to receive upgrades.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has noted in public commentary that passive infrared threats occupy a different category from the radar-guided systems that dominate headlines. Suppressing an enemy’s integrated air-defense network, he has argued, does not address the dispersed, low-tech launchers that operate independently of radar. That distinction is central to understanding why U.S. strikes against Iranian air defenses, however successful against fixed sites, leave a residual threat that pilots must still fly through.
What U.S. strikes have and have not accomplished
According to Associated Press reporting that compiled U.S. military claims, American forces have struck a range of Iranian air-defense targets, including radar installations and medium- to long-range missile batteries. Those operations degraded Tehran’s ability to track and engage aircraft at higher altitudes and longer ranges.
But specific figures on how many MANPADS or short-range infrared-guided systems survived those strikes have not been independently confirmed. The AP account indicates that some Iranian capabilities remain operational, and U.S. officials have not publicly detailed the extent of surviving low-altitude threats. The underlying data comes from military briefings that have not been cross-checked against satellite imagery or allied intelligence assessments in any public forum.
This gap matters because MANPADS are precisely the kind of weapon that survives conventional suppression campaigns. They do not emit radar signals that can be targeted from standoff range. They do not require fixed launch infrastructure. And Iran has had years to disperse them across its coastline, islands, and urban areas along the Persian Gulf, the narrow waterway where most U.S. air operations in the region take place.
Why the threat is assessed as growing
Several converging factors support the judgment that the danger from Iranian heat-seeking missiles is increasing rather than static. First, Iran has expanded domestic production of MANPADS variants, reducing its dependence on Russian or Chinese suppliers and making its inventory harder for Western intelligence to track through export monitoring. The Misagh-2, a domestically manufactured system that Iran has displayed at defense exhibitions and exported to allied militias, represents a capability that Tehran can replenish without foreign approval.
Second, Iran’s network of proxy forces and allied groups across the region provides additional launch platforms beyond Iranian territory itself. Hezbollah, Houthi forces in Yemen, and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have all been documented using MANPADS or similar infrared-guided weapons, according to United Nations panel-of-experts reports. Any conflict with Iran raises the possibility that these groups could target U.S. aircraft across multiple theaters simultaneously.
Third, the pace of U.S. countermeasure deployment has not kept up with the proliferation of the threat. The GAO flagged cost and engineering constraints on DIRCM installation more than 20 years ago, and while the technology has improved, fleet-wide coverage remains incomplete. Every aircraft without an infrared countermeasure suite is a potential target for a weapon that costs a fraction of what it takes to build and equip a fighter jet.
For the pilots who fly these missions, the arithmetic is unforgiving. Mission planners can adjust routes, vary altitudes, and prioritize countermeasure-equipped platforms for the most dangerous sorties. But as long as Iran retains a dispersed, mobile arsenal of heat-seeking missiles and the ability to manufacture more, the threat will persist regardless of how many fixed air-defense sites American forces destroy. Air dominance, as Hegseth’s own words suggest, is not the same as air safety.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
