After a month of war, Iranian missiles continue to fly towards Israel. While the vast majority are intercepted by the powerful Israeli air defense, questions arise about the country’s long-term capabilities.
The army recently denied that its stock of interceptors, crucial to countering the flow of Iranian missiles or Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon, was starting to run out.
But the war, now entering its fifth week, is depleting ammunition, especially long-range interceptors, according to analysts.
The Israeli air defense system, ultra-sophisticated and effective, is organized in layers and can respond to threats at any altitude.
The Arrow 2 and 3 missiles can intercept missiles flying beyond the earth’s atmosphere.
American THAAD systems, numbering one or two, complement Israeli defense.
“There is no place in Israel that is not protected by the multilayered air defense,” said Brigadier General Pini Yungman, president of TSG group, an Israeli company specializing in security systems.
“But in the field of defense, it is never 100%, and Israel’s missile interception rate of 92% is already ‘exceptional,'” he told AFP.
According to the Israeli army, which discloses few details about its defense systems, more than 400 ballistic missiles have been fired by Iran since the start of the war triggered on February 28 by Israeli-American strikes on the Islamic Republic.
The interception rate has “exceeded expectations,” recently praised army spokesperson Nadav Shoshani.
Indeed, most of the damage in Israel has been caused by missile debris. But among the 19 civilians killed in Israel since the start of the war, more than half were killed by Iranian missiles that penetrated the defense.
Exhaustion of ammunition
About two weeks after the start of the war, the American online media Semafor estimated, citing American sources, that Israel was “dangerously running out of ballistic missile interceptors.”
An Israeli military source denied this, stating there was no shortage “so far,” and that the army was “ready for a long battle.”
However, according to an analysis by the British research center Rusi published a few days ago, the United States, Israel, and their allies consumed vast quantities of munitions – offensive and defensive – in the first sixteen days of the war: 11,294 munitions, totaling $26 billion.
According to this report, long-range interceptors and high-precision munitions were “almost depleted” after those first two weeks.
“This means that if the war continues, the aircraft (Israeli and American) will have to penetrate deeper into Iranian airspace, and defensively, this will mean absorbing more Iranian missiles and drones,” said one of the study’s authors, US Lieutenant Colonel Jahara Matisek.
Production lead times and costs are high, especially for interceptors like the Israeli Arrows.
“It’s not just a question of money, it’s an industrial reality: long lead times for components, limited testing capacity, fragile subcontractors, and production chains that do not unfold like an iPhone factory,” added Colonel Matisek.
According to the Rusi report, 81.33% of Israel’s pre-war Arrow interceptor missile stocks have already been depleted, and they will likely be “completely consumed by the end of March.”
Malfunctions
General Yungman nevertheless believes that Israel can produce interceptors more quickly than Iran can manufacture ballistic missiles.
However, the Israeli system is not immune to malfunctions. The army acknowledged that a malfunction in the “David’s Sling” missile defense system allowed two Iranian missiles to fall on two cities in southern Israel last Saturday, including Dimona, where a strategic nuclear research center is located.
According to the Israeli newspaper Calcalist, the army chose to use the shorter-range David’s Sling to preserve its Arrow stocks.
“David’s Sling” constitutes the intermediate layer of the Israeli missile defense architecture, complementing the “Hetz” (Arrow) and “Iron Dome,” as well as the “Iron Beam” laser system, tasked with intercepting a wide range of projectiles.
Faced with the challenges posed by Iranian missiles, Israel has three options, according to researcher Jean-Loup Samaan at the Middle East Institute in Singapore: “mixing different (anti-air defense) systems to avoid shortages; not intercepting missiles or drones that will fall in uninhabited areas; increasing (military) pressure to degrade Iran’s capabilities before Israeli defense resources are exhausted.”
AFP
