BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast.

With a programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life, I'm Charlotte McDonald.

On Saturday, the 28th of February, the US and Israel launched a military attack on Iran,

targeting the country's missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership.

In response, Iran launched a wave of strikes across the region, including on Israel and the Gulf states.

Iran has a stockpile of ballistic missiles, which is firing at neighbouring countries.

These countries in turn are using interceptor missiles to try and shoot them down.

The brutal equation we're looking at today,

is it clear who will run out of missiles first?

I am Kelly Grico, and I am a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.,

a nonpartisan think tank on national security and foreign policy. We're seeing a lot of missiles

and drones crisscrossing the skies over the entire Gulf. The United States and Israel have

conducted intense operations using a lot of missiles against Iranian targets, something on the order

of about 2,000 targets have been struck.

Iran, though, is not sitting back and just taking it.

It's also sending a lot of missiles and drones into the region, and particularly targeting the Gulf States. Over 500 ballistic missiles have been fired at Gulf States.

We're going to focus on the part of the battle involving ballistic missiles today.

In cases isn't obvious, a ballistic missile is not something it's easy to protect yourself

from.

These are missiles that go really high up and then come back down towards Earth on a predictable

path.

...