VIGIL CONSILIUMSearch
Context. Not headlines.
Conflict coverage · Iran–Gulf

Force Structure

Every published organisation on both sides, as an order of battle you can walk: pick a formation, see the parent above it and its subordinates below, and read what the record itself states.

Context, not targeting. This atlas describes structure and history. It deliberately excludes current locations, live strength, unit movements, and anything operationally sensitive — the content model has no fields for them. See the methodology.
01

Order of battle

Structural · historical · non-operational

This view needs JavaScript. Every organisation it draws has a permanent page of its own — the Formations indexlists all of them, and the browser on the left links each one.

Line pattern is the subordination the record states: solid confirmed · dashed reported · fine dots disputed · sparse dots unknown or historical. Vigil category device — drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role. Not an official insignia. No positions, strengths, readiness or movements are published, and none is drawn.

02

Equipment Library

Major publicly documented systems · full profiles and structured records

Reviewed profiles of major publicly documented systems — the ones unit profiles and key events link to, each with a permanent page. The full structured catalogue, including the stub index, lives at Equipment. Each system's confidence grade, status date and sources are shown on its own record.

Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The American destroyer that is the Gulf's actual missile-defence-at-sea — the Aegis ships that have intercepted Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea since 2023 and Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Israel, and the vessels behind the naval interdiction of Iranian exports in 2026.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Red Sea campaign

Bavar-373

Air defence
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Iran's domestically built long-range air-defence system — developed after the S-300 sale was frozen in 2010 and fielded beside the S-300PMU-2 that eventually arrived, and the clearest statement of the Air Defence Force's claim to self-sufficiency.
Origin
Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war

Dassault Rafale

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The French fighter through which Qatar and the Emirates diversified away from American types — and, in the Emirati case, the largest single export order the aircraft has had.
Origin
France

Eurofighter Typhoon

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The European fighter that four Gulf air forces chose as their second supplier — the political hedge, in aircraft form, against dependence on a single ally.
Origin
United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain
Also appears in
Yemen campaign
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The heavy American fighter that is the common thread of the region's most capable air forces — the Saudi F-15SA, the Qatari F-15QA and the Israeli F-15I — and the type most associated with strike at the ranges this system is fought across.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Yemen campaign

F-16AM/BM

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Ukraine's first Western fighter — an air-defence workhorse and integration milestone rather than the silver bullet once advertised.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Ukraine–Russia · Middle East · global service

F-35I Adir

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Israel's stealth fighter, modified to an Israeli specification — the aircraft most associated in reporting with the deep strikes on Iran in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and with the December 2024 campaign that destroyed most of Syria's air defences and aircraft in days.
Origin
United States, Israel
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Twelve-day war 2025 · Syria December 2024 strikes
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
Iran's domestically built midget submarines of North Korean lineage — small, numerous, shallow-water boats designed for the strait itself rather than for the open sea, and the underwater counterpart of the Guard Navy's small-craft mass.
Origin
Iran, North Korea
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The fighter force the Shah bought and the revolution kept — F-14s, F-4s and F-5s flying half a century on, with Soviet types added and a domestic reverse-engineering industry behind them — recorded as one capability because its analytical meaning is the whole fleet's obsolescence, not any type's characteristics.
Origin
United States, Soviet Union / Russia, Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war

Iranian anti-ship missile families

Missile / precision strike
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The shore- and craft-launched anti-ship missiles — Chinese C-802 derivatives produced domestically, joined by an anti-ship ballistic missile — that give Iran's coast a reach across the whole strait, and whose Houthi derivatives have been fired at merchant ships in the Red Sea.
Origin
China, Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Red Sea campaign
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The medium-range families — liquid-fuel descendants of the North Korean Nodong and Iran's own solid-fuel designs — that give the Aerospace Force reach to Israel and to every Gulf state, and whose numbers and accuracy are the most contested figures in the module.
Origin
Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Twelve-day war 2025

Iranian naval mining capability

IED / explosive threat · capability record
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The capability most discussed and least used in the Gulf: a stock of naval mines, estimated in the low thousands in published assessments that disagree widely, and the small craft and submarines to lay them — a threat that has shaped the strait's insurance and routing for four decades without once closing it.
Origin
Iran, Soviet Union / Russia, China
Also appears in
Tanker War 1987–88
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The solid-fuel short-range families that account for most of what Iran fires — road-mobile, quick to launch, and improved generation by generation from a 2000s rocket into precision-guided missiles with ranges published in the hundreds of kilometres.
Origin
Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Twelve-day war 2025
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The hundreds of fast, small, missile- and rocket-armed craft that are the Guard Navy's method — swarming boats built for a narrow, shallow, crowded sea in which mass and dispersion matter more than tonnage, and the vessels behind every tanker seizure and harassment incident reported in the Gulf.
Origin
Iran, Sweden, United Kingdom, North Korea
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The three-tier shield — Iron Dome against rockets and drones, David's Sling against medium-range threats, Arrow against ballistic missiles in and beyond the atmosphere — that engaged the Iranian retaliation of both wars, and the most tested multi-layer missile defence in the world.
Origin
Israel, United States
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Twelve-day war 2025
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The three Russian-built boats acquired in the 1990s — the only conventional submarines of consequence in the Gulf's littoral states, and the Artesh Navy's most survivable and least visible asset, whose condition after three decades and two wars is not established.
Origin
Russia

MIM-104 Patriot

Air defence
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The upper tier of Ukraine's air defence — the system publicly credited with its routine ballistic-missile intercepts over the cities.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Ukraine–Russia · Middle East

Mirage 2000-5

Combat aircraft
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The third type in Taiwan's 1990s fighter acquisition — capable in the interception role, and the clearest illustration of the sustainment cost of operating a small fleet of a type few others fly.
Origin
France
Also appears in
Taiwan Strait
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The domestically built light frigates that carry the Artesh Navy's outward-facing role — the ships that make its long-range deployments and naval diplomacy possible — and the class most concerned by United States claims in March 2026 to have destroyed much of Iran's regular surface fleet.
Origin
Iran
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war
Documented in conflictFull record →
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The Soviet long-range SAM that anchored Armenian air defence — and whose documented destruction by drones in 2020 became the era's defining image of legacy air defence meeting the loitering-munition age.
Origin
Soviet Union / Russia
Also appears in
Nagorno-Karabakh 2020
Historical / withdrawnFull record →

Shahed-136 / Geran-2 family

Strike UAV / loitering munition
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The mass one-way attack drone of the strategic strike campaign.
Origin
Iran, Russia
Also appears in
Ukraine–Russia · Middle East

THAAD

Air defence
Silhouette · not to scale
Role
The upper tier of the Gulf's missile defence — the American system that intercepts ballistic missiles in their terminal phase at altitudes Patriot cannot reach, first used in combat by the Emirates in 2022 and deployed across the region as the 2026 war made the layer necessary.
Origin
United States
Also appears in
Iran–Gulf 2026 war · Twelve-day war 2025