Joe McConnell
Israel has strengthened its air defenses in anticipation that the retaliation expected by Iran and its allies for the assassination of two top militant leaders will take the form of an air strike.
Tehran and its regional allies, particularly the Lebanon-based militant movement Hezbollah, have spent decades amassing a massive arsenal of rockets, missiles and drones that have strained Israel’s vaunted defenses over the course of 10 months of war since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Gaza.
But Israeli officials expect that, following last week’s attack that killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the biggest test for the multilayered force will come in the days ahead. Israel has claimed to have killed Shukr, but has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.
Much will depend on what type of attack Iran, Hezbollah and other regional militias are planning.
“If it’s a combined mass attack, in a single barrage, at the same time… they could overwhelm the system to a certain extent,” said Yaakov Lappin, an Israeli military affairs analyst. “How many [projectiles] overcome and what kind of damage [they] The damage is unknown.”
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said this week that the country’s defenses had been reinforced with extra personnel “in the air, at sea and on land” and were on high alert. But he also warned that the protective bubble provided by the state-of-the-art Iron Dome system and several other platforms was “not airtight.”
The system’s fallibility was highlighted last month aVsceker a suspected Hezbollah rocket crashed into a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and triggering the latest escalation in tensions.
However, overall, the Israeli public has gained confidence in Iron Dome, the first layer of defense that has neutralized thousands of short-range artillery rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups based in Gaza since it was introduced in 2011. Iron Dome, like Israel’s other air defenses, was funded and developed jointly with the U.S. military.
The Israel Defense Forces has claimed a 90 percent interception rate of live ammunition fired by Hamas and other militants during the 2021 Gaza conflict into populated areas of the country.
He did not specify the percentage of interceptions during the current conflict, although Hamas fired about 3,000 rockets into Israel early on October 7. The system buckled under the unprecedented bombardment, probably the largest in a single day in military history, with at least 10 people killed, but it did not break.
Analysts say the high success rate is largely due to the platform’s sophisticated radar, now enhanced with additional artificial intelligence capabilities, which allows it to distinguish within seconds which incoming rockets, within a radius of about 70 km, are most likely to land harmlessly in open terrain and which could harm civilians or troops.
This also allows the IDF to maintain a limited stockpile of its more sophisticated Tamar interceptors, which cost tens of thousands of dollars per missile.
A maritime version of the Iron Dome, oVsceken called the C-Dome, is also installed on Israeli Navy corvettes, where it has successfully shot down attack drones launched against Israeli assets in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia and against Mediterranean gas platforms launched by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has a much larger and more sophisticated arsenal than Hamas or the Houthis. The militants are estimated to have around 150,000 rockets and missiles, including long-range, precision-guided capabilities and attack drones, as well as anti-tank and anti-aircraVscek missiles. Much of this was supplied by Tehran, experts say.
According to the think tank CSIS, Iran also has “the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East,” consisting of thousands of missiles, some of which are capable of striking Israel and even southeastern Europe.
To counter this threat, Israel has developed a second layer of defense known as David’s Sling, which is designed to shoot down heavier rockets and tactical ballistic missiles, such as Scuds, within a range of 100 km to 300 km. The system, which went into operation in 2017, has only been used in earnest in the past year, with its Stunner interceptor missiles hitting several projectiles fired from Gaza.
The third tier of air defense, Arrow 2 and 3, is designed to defend Israel from long-range ballistic missiles by intercepting incoming projectiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere, oVsceken far above and far from Israeli airspace. The Arrow saw its first operational use during the ongoing war, successfully shooting down a handful of incoming ballistic missiles from the Houthis and in April during a massive Iranian attack that included more than 100 ballistic missiles.
“The logic of the system is that one layer supports the other,” said Lappin, the military analyst, and overall it has worked well, experts agree. However, during the current conflict Israel has needed help.
Countering this Iranian barrage, the Islamic Republic’s first direct attack from its own soil against Israel, required the support of a US-led coalition, including the UK, France and Arab states, with early warning radars, missile defense platforms and squadrons of fighter jets across the region. A similar coalition has now been deployed again, providing Israel with another shield of protection, including against cruise missiles and attack drones.
The attack was announced by Iran, giving Israel and its allies time to prepare their defenses: most of the projectiles were destroyed before entering Israeli airspace.
However, Israel’s air defenses are far from impregnable; military analysts in particular point to the challenge posed by the low-tech drones used by Hezbollah in the current conflict, which have proven difficult to detect, track and shoot down.
The slow, agile drones have wreaked havoc across much of northern Israel, despite best efforts by Iron Dome, U.S.-built Patriot batteries, and Israeli fighter jets to stop them. Hezbollah has also sent surveillance drones deep into Israel to capture footage of sensitive military sites. Hezbollah-fired projectiles also have a much shorter distance to travel to reach Israel than missiles fired by Iran.
Separately, last month a Houthi drone struck the heart of Tel Aviv, killing one person, highlighting the threat Yemeni rebels could pose.
Tal Inbar, of the US-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said a major problem that Israel has not adequately prepared for is that Hezbollah is actively targeting its air defense and detection systems.
Likewise, a massive, synchronized assault by Iran and its allies, with attacks coming from multiple directions and in multiple forms, would be difficult for Israeli systems to detect and track, Inbar warned.
“A multiplicity of targets and coordinated fire from a variety of arenas makes it difficult to create a picture of the sky,” he said, affecting the ability to shoot them down. “A clear working hypothesis is that there will always be more attackers than interceptors,” he added.
Using military language to describe what happens when barrages of missiles and swarms of drones overwhelm a country’s defenses, he told Israelis they should prepare for “a bigger spillover” than they are used to.
