It started like every war‑game the US Navy had ever run in the Strait of Hormuz: a destroyer on escort duty, a known IRGC shoreline, and the familiar threat of Noor anti‑ship missiles from catalogued launch pads.

At 14:07 local time, alarms shrieked aboard the Arleigh Burke–class destroyer as two Noor launches lit up from well‑mapped coastal batteries. Aegis screens flashed red; SM‑2 interceptors rose, shredding both missiles in mid‑air. Combat information officers exhaled. Scenario complete.

Then came the third track.

Low, dirty and late, it appeared from inland — a sea‑skimmer racing out of a narrow wadi cut into the cliffs, a dry riverbed that wasn’t on any threat map. No concrete pad. No known radar. Just a camouflaged truck launcher rolled into a fold of rock intelligence had labelled “terrain, non‑critical.”

CIWS guns spat a storm of tungsten as the Noor tore across the last miles. It didn’t score a clean hit, but its proximity blast ripped sensors from the destroyer’s forward mast, peppered the hull with shrapnel and injured a dozen sailors on deck. For ninety seconds, the ship’s picture of the battlespace went grey.

When it came back, the response was brutal. Coordinates of the wadi were fed to a waiting strike package; minutes later, drone footage showed the ravine turned into a smoking trench, launch truck and crew erased.

For planners in Washington and Gulf capitals, the lesson is sobering: the first two missiles came from the playbook. The one that almost mattered came from a place the playbook didn’t even know existed.