How Israel’s Iron Dome wiped out Iran’s barrage of missiles

Iran fired almost 200 ballistic missiles at Israel last night as tension in the Middle East continue to escalate – putting its missile defense system to the ultimate test. However, despite the seemingly overwhelming barrage, the IDF said it was able to intercept ‘a large number’ of the rockets thanks to Israel’s ’90 percent effective’, rocket-intercepting, three-tiered missile defense system. Its three tiers are made up of the IDF’s ‘Arrow’ and ‘David’s Sling’ missile defense systems – along with the more famous ‘Iron Dome’ system. The powerful short-range Iron Dome system was used to shoot down many of the the incoming barrage of missiles on Tuesday – and has previously helped to resist attacks from other Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, Yemen – and Hamas in Gaza. In basic terms, the Iron Dome works to detect incoming rockets, before determining their path and intercepting them before they can hit their targets. Since it first went into operation in 2011, it has blasted thousands of airborne weapons out of the sky, ranging from bottle rockets to ballistic missiles. The multi-billion pound air defense system, developed by Israel with US backing after the 2006 Lebanon War, has been crucial in defending Israeli cities for over a decade and is credited with preventing serious damage or casualties. The Arrow and David’s Sling systems, along with the Iron Dome, were last used by Israel in April this year to intercept more than 300 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles launched by Iran.

MailOnline has looked into the elaborate system and how it works. What is the Iron Dome? The Iron Dome is an all-weather mobile system in Israel that is made up of at least 10 missile-defense batteries strategically distributed around the country. The device is made up of three main sections: a radar detection system, a computer to calculate the incoming rocket’s trajectory, and a launcher that fires interceptors if the rocket is deemed likely to hit a built-up or strategic area. It uses a sophisticated radar to detect incoming airborne objects such as a drones, rockets, and missiles, it sends the information back to a command-and-control centre. Here, the threat is tracked to assess whether it is a false alarm and the potential destination of the flying object. Each truck-towed unit then fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats like rockets, mortars and drones in mid-air. The system fires the interceptors – just 6 inches wide and 10 feet long- at the incoming threats that seem most likely to hit an inhabited area. Each Iron Dome battery consists of three to four launchers that can each carry up to 20 Tamir interceptor missiles. The batteries can neutralize threats launched from up to 43 miles away, while at the same time ignoring projectiles that are projected to strike unpopulated areas. In late 2012 Israel said that it hoped to increase the range of Iron Dome’s interceptions, from a maximum of 43 to 155 miles away and make it more versatile so that it could intercept rockets coming from two directions simultaneously.

The 10 Iron Domes placed throughout the country are able to defend up to nearly 60 square miles of land – protecting countless civilians and critical infrastructure. The system was developed by state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries and was upgraded in 2012, but the details of the changes were not made public. The United States backed the initial project with a $200,000 grant in 2006. The David’s Sling and Arrow Defenses: The Iron Dome is just one of Israel’s three-tiered missile defense system along with The Arrow, and David’s Sling. Israel’s Iron Dome system garners the most attention of the country’s air defenses as it’s used most frequently to bring down unguided, short-range rockets often fired by Hezbollah and Hamas. However, the country’s air defenses are made of three critical ‘overlapping’ systems that can blast threats out of the skies at different ranges. The targeting of guided ballistic missiles that travel at higher altitudes, longer ranges and faster speeds requires a different system from the Iron Dome to take them down. For this, Israel uses both ‘David’s Sling ‘and the ‘Arrow 2 and 3’ home-grown air defense systems which are built to destroy medium-range and long-range ballistic missiles. The Arrow system developed with the US is designed to intercept long-range missiles, including the types of ballistic missiles Iran launched at Israel.

Both the Arrow 2 and 3 systems are capable of handling much longer-range missiles like Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM’s) that will likely travel at altitudes beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, a capability similar to the US military’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) air defense system. The Arrow 3 system is believed to have a range of 1,500 miles and can reach an altitude of 100 miles. The Arrow 2 is designed to explode near a missile to bring down an incoming missile, but the Arrow 3 is a hit-to-kill missile. The systems are designed to engage threats both in and outside the atmosphere, and they operate at an altitude that allows for the safe dispersal of any non-conventional warheads. State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries is the project’s main contractor, while Boeing Co. is involved in producing the interceptors. David’s Sling, also developed with the US, is meant to intercept medium-range missiles, such as those possessed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The two-stage missile has no warhead, it destroys incoming ballistic missiles with the sheer force of impact, making it what is known as a “hit- to- kill” which has been characterized as hitting a bullet with a bullet given the high velocities involved.

How did the Iron Dome help intercept Iran’s barrage of missiles on Tuesday night? It’s unclear how many of the missiles actually penetrated Israel’s defenses, with the scale of the strike proving to be one of the biggest tests ever faced by the country’s hi-tech Iron Dome network. A triumphant Tehran has claimed up to 80 percent of its missiles ripped through Israel’s sophisticated air defenses – but the IDF disputed this, saying most were shot down, with the aid of US warships in the region. Dramatic footage from the aerial assault showed missiles streaking through the sky, with some exploding mid-air after being hit by Israeli air defense missiles – while others were seen slamming into the ground and blowing up. And as the fallout of last night’s raid continues to clear, amid fears a retaliatory strike could ignite ‘all-out war’ in the Middle East, defense experts have said Israel’s air defenses were broadly successful in protecting the country. ‘If this is the best [Iran] can do, then Israel will chalk this up as yet another victory. Yes, another humiliation for Tehran,’ defense expert Michael Clarke said. Defense expert Prof Clarke said Iran’s shock attack had sought to ‘overwhelm’ Israeli defenses – and was a step up from Tehran’s last attack on April 13 when more than 300 projectiles were fired and largely repelled.

He said TV pictures indicated a ‘fairly fierce, sort of missile, counter-missile battery battle’ above Jerusalem and other cities. Although some missiles appeared to breach Israeli defenses, Prof Clarke claimed this could have been a deliberate decision by the IDF to ‘let go’ the missiles that weren’t deemed a major threat. Describing the Iron Dome and its effectiveness, he told Sky News: ‘It’s really important to understand when we’re trying to talk about how effectively the Iron Dome – Israel’s defense system works. ‘What they do is they track incoming missiles and if they think that the missile is going to land in a place that doesn’t matter they just let it go. ‘There’s no point in using a very expensive air defense missile against something that is going to fall into the middle of the desert. ‘The whole of the Iron Dome system is built on a very sophisticated monitoring system and they work out which missiles they need to intercept and which missiles they just let go. ‘And so when the Iranians claim ‘lots of missiles have landed’ some of them probably will have – but some of them will have probably landed in the middle of nowhere and the Israelis will have just let them go.’ He said ballistic missiles were ‘much more predictable than cruise missiles’, which weren’t used last night. Cruise missiles have the ability to be guided towards their target and were ‘harder to predict’ where they would land, Prof Clarke said.

‘It may be programmed to dodge around and go on a decoy and turn back around and so on before it reaches its target. ‘So you don’t really know [where it will land] and you’ve got no choice but to shoot cruise missiles down if you can. ‘But ballistic missiles – the sort that the Iranians are using which are almost certainly variations of the Fateh-110 which they developed many years ago – only burn for maybe 30 or 40 seconds, and then they’re on pure ballistics. ‘So once the take-off has been detected – and they’re easy to detect on take-off because they’re slow and hot and have a very big signature.’ Iran’s cache of ballistic missiles: Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, drawing on an array of weapons that has long worried the West. The attack came five months after a strike in April that was the first-ever direct Iranian strike on Israel. Ballistic missiles are an important part of the arsenal at Tehran’s disposal. A ballistic missile is a rocket-propelled weapon that is guided during its initial ascent but follows a free-fall trajectory under gravity for most of its flight. It delivers warheads – containing either conventional explosives or potentially biological, chemical or nuclear munitions – over varying distances, with classifications ranging from short to intercontinental ranges depending on the missile type. According to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Iran is armed with the largest number of ballistic missiles in the Middle East.

The semi-official Iranian news outlet ISNA published a graphic in April showing nine Iranian missiles it said could reach Israel. These included the ‘Sejil’, capable of flying at more than 10,500 miles per hour and with a range of 1,550 miles, the ‘Kheibar’ with a range of 1,240 miles, and the ‘Haj Qasem’, which has a range of 870 miles, ISNA said. The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based non-governmental organization, says Iran’s ballistic missiles include ‘Shahab-1’, with an estimated range of 190 miles; the ‘Zolfaghar’, with 435 miles; ‘Shahab-3’, with 500 to 620 miles; ‘Emad-1’, a missile under development with a range up to 1,240 miles and ‘Sejil’, under development, with 930 to 1,550 miles. Fabian Hinz, a Berlin-based expert on Iran’s missile arsenal with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that based on the locations of videos of launches posted on social media and the ranges to Israel, he assessed that Iran fired a combination of solid- and liquid-fueled missiles. The former category of missile, which is more advanced, is fired from angled mobile launchers and the latter from vertical launchers, he said. He said three solid-propellent missiles fired on Tuesday could be the ‘Haj Qasem’, ‘Kheibar Shekan’ and ‘Fattah 1’. Liquid propellant missiles reported as being launched from Isfahan might potentially be the ‘Emad’, ‘Badr’ and ‘Khorramshahr’, he said.

How effective is the Iron Dome? Iron Dome’s effectiveness has improved since it first successfully took out a hostile projective in April 2011, and has gone on to achieve a reported success rate of around 90 percent, according to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. In a large Iranian attack in October 2024, most of the roughly 180 missiles were intercepted by the defensive weapon before reaching Israeli territory, while others were shot down by the United States and other allies. It has also been proven to be highly effective in recent years, with its abilities especially highlighted in 2021 after militant groups in Gaza fired at least 4,000 rockets during the 11-day May war. In the first 24 hours of the conflict 470 rockets were fired with Iron Dome system intercepting about 90% of the rockets heading to populated areas within Israel. In the US, Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering wrote in Defense News: ‘Iron Dome has stopped over 2,000 rockets fired at Israeli population centers with a remarkable success rate, an achievement that also shifted US thinking about homeland missile defense. ‘Iron Dome is the most proven and affordable option against very short-range fire.’ He hailed it as a ‘gamechanger’. On the battlefield during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, and when used in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the system had 84 percent and 91 percent rates of success, respectively. 

But things become more complicated if the drones are flying so low that the radar can’t detect them. Israel has hundreds of interceptor missiles at its disposal, but the Iron Dome has come under immense pressure as seen on October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel with a barrage of thousands of missiles. Hamas said it launched 5,000 rockets in the initial attack and Israel’s military countered by saying just 2,500 rockets were fired. ‘That quantity was simply too much for Iron Dome to manage,’ said the Modern War Institute report. This suggests the Iron Dome has a limit to the number of rockets it is able to intercept, and if that number is exceeded, the rest of the rockets will permeate the system, according to a Forbes report from 2021. Just two days after the October 7 massacre, the Israeli government asked the US to provide more precision-guided munitions for its combat aircraft and more interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system, according to a US official. How much does it cost? A complete battery costs an estimated £80 million ($106 million) to produce, while each interceptor costs up to around £40,000 ($53,000)  to launch, according to the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. The US has invested heavily in the system, helping with development costs and replenishing it during times of conflict.

Since 1946, the US has allocated almost nine billion pounds to Israeli missile defense systems, including nearly two billion pounds for the Iron Dome, according to the Congressional Research Service. US President Joe Biden has said he will ask Congress for £11.4 billion ($12.6 billion) in military aid for Israel – which would help with air and missile defense systems such as the Iron Dome, according to the White House. ‘We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome,’ Biden said. The future of the Iron Dome: Rafael says it delivered two Iron Dome batteries to the US Army in 2020 – but the US is not the only country keen to get its hands on the powerful batteries. Last year, Ukraine asked Israel for an Iron Dome system and other air defense equipment to defend against Iranian ballistic missiles and attack drones used by Russia in its ongoing invasion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year said supports Ukraine but ruled out sending Kyiv an Iron Dome system over concerns that it could be obtained by Iran, which would greatly jeopardize Israel’s security. Several other countries have also expressed interest in buying Iron Dome systems in recent years, including Germany, Romania and India. A naval version of the Iron Dome to protect ships and sea-based assets was also deployed in 2017.

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