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Israel’s Air Defenses Are Vulnerable to Drone Attack

F-35I Adir from Israel. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
F-35I Adir from Israel. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Israel’s air and missile defenses have proven capable of stopping everything from Iranian ballistic missiles to homemade Hamas rockets.

But some Israeli experts worry that high-tech anti-missiles systems are prey to a low-tech threat: the humble drone.

“We have to defend our air defense,” warned Eran Ortal and Ran Kochav – two retired Israeli brigadier generals – in a blog for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Defense at Bar-Ilan University.

Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) has long been a feature of air warfare, from Spitfires strafing Nazi flak guns to “Wild Weasels” targeting North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile batteries. Until recently, this was accomplished primarily by aircraft armed with bombs, rockets, cannon and anti-radar missiles.

But as the Ukraine war has shown, drones have become a huge threat to ground-based air defenses. YouTube has plenty of videos of Ukrainian and Russian drones destroying air defense systems such as the S-300 and Pantsir.

Israel arguably has the best air and missile defense system in the world. For example, Israel – assisted by the US, Britain and other nations – reportedly intercepted 99 percent of some 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and large drones launched by Iran in April 2024. 

The Israeli system is multilayer, with three different systems tasked with stopping specific threats. Long-range Arrow interceptors target ballistic missiles above the Earth’s atmosphere, medium-range David’s Sling rockets are aimed at ballistic and cruise missiles about 10 miles high.

At the same time, the short-range, low-altitude Iron Dome intercepts cruise missiles, short-range rockets and artillery and mortar shells.

The problem is that this integrated system was designed under the assumption that the jet fighters of the Israeli Air Force would protect the air defense batteries – which are controlled by Air Defense Command, a branch of the Air Force – from enemy aircraft. “The working assumption was, and remains to this day, that Israel’s Air Force rules the skies,” the authors explain. “The job of air defense, therefore, is to focus on missiles and rockets.”

“The air defense itself was not supposed to be hunted,” they added.

Until a few years ago, that assumption was not unreasonable. The IAF was able, for the most part, to shield Israeli troops and cities from attack by aircraft. 

But jets such as the F-16 and F-35 are not designed to stop small quadcopters flying close to the ground, or kamikaze drones with explosive charges capable – as repeatedly shown in Ukraine – of destroying tanks, artillery and missile launchers. This allows Israel’s enemies to exploit what Ortal and Kochav call a “loophole” in Israel’s air and missile defenses.

Ortal and Kochav worry that enemies such as Iran could begin a missile offensive by launching drones to knock out Israeli defenses, creating safe corridors for ballistic and cruise missiles. “The enemy is able to penetrate deep into Israel and engage the air defense system in one lane while other aircraft take advantage of the diversion and penetrate in another, more covert lane. It can identify targets and strike immediately using armed or suicide UAS. Above all, it strives to locate, endanger, and destroy key elements of the air defense system itself.”

All weapons have some Achilles heel. Armies compensate by integration and combined arms: tanks, infantry and artillery, for example, are most effective when they work together as a team. But Israel’s missile defenses were not designed for teamwork.

“The degree of mutual assistance and protection between the layers is relatively limited,” Ortal and Kochav wrote. To optimize the allocation of a limited supply of interceptors, “each tier was designed to deal with a specific type of missile or rocket. Iron Dome can’t really assist Arrow batteries or support their missions. This limitation is equally true among the other layers.”

Another potential countermeasure against SEAD is creating fake missile launchers and radars. Decoy weapons have been successfully employed by the Serbs, Iraqis and other nations. But confident that the IAF would control the skies, Israel didn’t build its air defenses with survivability in mind. “The degree of mobility, protection and hiding ability of the Israeli air defense system is inadequate,” Ortal and Kochav wrote. “Unlike similar systems in the world, our air defense system was not built with synchronization as a critical goal.”

Iron Dome. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Iron Dome launcher at the Israeli Air Force exhibition at Ramat David AFB on Israel’s 69th Independence Day.

Ortal and Kochav urge the creation of a fourth air and missile defense layer that would function as a point defense system to stop rockets and drones that have penetrated the first three layers. Air defense systems must be camouflaged, and should be mobile enough to change location before the enemy can target them.

“The recognition that our air superiority is not absolute is dramatic, but it must be acknowledged,” they concluded. “Despite our control of fighter jets and traditional air superiority, our forces at the front suffer from a dangerous level of inferiority and lack of protection.”

About the Author: Michael Peck 

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers University. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn

Written By

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn

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