Last Thursday, the Defense Ministry announced that it had signed a contract to accelerate the acquisition of Arrow interceptors.
The ministry said in a statement that the Arrow system, which was developed and manufactured in cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency, “demonstrated significant interception capabilities during the Israel-Hamas War, especially during Operation Rising Lion.”
Deciding to acquire more of the interceptors would seem obvious. However, this is part of the much larger series of lessons learned in the recent 12-day war with Iran.
A month after Operation Rising Lion, what are the technological lessons that were learned? What should Israel expect in a future war with Iran?
The Islamic Republic launched an estimated 550 ballistic missiles at Israel between June 13 and June 24. Most of the launches took place in the early days of the war.
Iran was caught by surprise by the Israeli attack. It appears that it struggled to keep up a volume of missile fire in the 12-day war. This is in contrast to the two attacks that Iran carried out on Israel in 2024.
In April 2024, Tehran targeted Israel with ballistic missiles and drones. It also carried out another mass attack in October using ballistic missiles. These attacks were both planned in advance by Iran. It does not appear that there was much effort back then to suppress Iran’s ability to launch rockets at Israel.
But Jerusalem learned from the 2024 attacks. During the 12-day war in June, the country focused on taking out Iranian missile launchers. It appears likely that many of the launchers were destroyed in the war. This prevented Iran from launching large attacks with hundreds of missiles simultaneously.
Instead, the Islamic Republic was forced to carry out a few attacks with launchers that had to be increasingly positioned in central or eastern Iran. Israel’s ability to carry out a large number of aerial sorties over Iran and use drones as part of the sorties’ makeup led to the overall successful suppression of Iran’s threats.
Of more interest is the fact that around 99% of the Iranian drone threat was intercepted, or failed to reach Israel. In warfare, it is very rare to get to a 99% figure. For instance, for Iron Dome interceptions, the percentage is usually assumed to be in the 90s, but not near the 100% mark.
The interception rate of Iranian ballistic missiles was not nearly as high, estimated at 86%. Some missiles penetrated Israel’s air defenses with devastating results. Around thirty people were killed and thousands more were wounded by the Iranian attacks.
In essence, the war has taught Israel that 40 years of investments in air defenses have paid off. The Arrow program originated in the 1980s. The Scud threat, which saw then-Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein launch Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War, demonstrated that Israel needed air defenses.
The US-made Patriot at the time was insufficient, and it subsequently proved not to have performed well in 1991. That showed that the US, Israel, and the West still had a lot to learn.
Luckily for Israel, there were no more Saddam Hussein-type regimes in the 1990s that posed such a threat. Israel had time to work on technologies for defending the country. The Second Intifada distracted Israel a bit from this course because Israel had to deal with an insurgency in the West Bank and Gaza. Then, the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Hezbollah indicated that Israel badly needed to play catch-up in terms of improving its air defenses.
The result was the Iron Dome system. A decade later, David’s Sling, a medium-range interceptor, and then Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 were ready to see action. David’s Sling and Arrow have proven themselves in the Israel-Hamas War that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre and in Operation Rising Lion.
Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems company produces David’s Sling and the Iron Dome. The Israel Aerospace Industries manufacturers the Arrow system.
Air defense technology is not the only area where Israel has seen success in the recent war. The Israel Air Force also performed phenomenally in the war on Iran. Not all the technologies are known; however, some of the details have been revealed.
Israel's attacks on Iran used systems manufactured by Iran
Channel 12 noted that “the air force carried out dozens of attacks on nuclear facilities in Iran and the capital of the Islamic Republic, Tehran.”
“On July 16, it was revealed that during the attacks by the air force aircraft in Iran, the aircraft were equipped with ‘self-defense suites’ manufactured by Elbit Systems, which constituted an additional and critical layer of protection against threats to Israeli fighter jets, which recorded unprecedented success,” N12 continued.
Israel had ample time to troubleshoot and learn what worked and what did not in the lead-up to the 12-day battle.
Firstly, Israel had to deal with the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent war. That war has dragged on and is primarily a grueling ground war, utilizing tanks and infantry. While some new technologies were introduced in Gaza, they are designed principally to address insurgency.
Where Israel got to learn how the Iranian challenge might play out was in the war with the Houthis and Hezbollah. Israel carried out around half a dozen major air raids on the Houthis. These were long-range strikes over more than 2,000 kilometers.
That meant that Israel used drones, various types of F-16s, F-15s, and F-35s, as well as refuelers in the airstrikes. Jerusalem also carried out long-range strikes on Iran in October 2024 in response to the Iranian attack. In addition, the Jewish state was able to successfully suppress a large volume of missile fire by Hezbollah, partly by destroying rocket and missile stocks, and also by hitting Hezbollah’s command and control.
A major lesson of the conflict with Iran is that the Iranian military model is not as relevant as it seems. Tehran pushed to arm its proxies in the region. The proxies are dangerous, and they have bedeviled other countries, such as Saudi Arabia.
Iran also launched a direct attack on Saudi Arabia using drones and cruise missiles in 2019. This was a curtain raiser into Iran’s way of war.
Further, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq attacked US forces with drones and rockets. Iran may have improved its drones and missiles over time, but its arsenal is vulnerable to defeat. Its drones, primarily the Shahed 136, have been exported to Russia for use against Ukraine, for instance.
However, the Ukrainians have shown that the drone threat can be mostly neutralized. This does not mean they reached the 99% interception rate that Israel apparently achieved. Still, Kyiv has been successful in stopping many drones.
Iran’s drone and missile technology may have peaked in this war. The Islamic Republic will continue to try to make the missiles more precise and increase their range or their features.
Yet, these rockets are a false hope for Tehran. Iran has boasted in the past of developing “hypersonic” missiles. Most ballistic missiles reach hypersonic speeds by virtue of their trajectory, so this does not mean that they have the capability of maneuvering.
It is the maneuver element in the “hypersonic” threat that matters most. Iran likes to talk about its accomplishments, but its missiles and drones continue to show signs of vulnerability.
Missiles and drones also do not win wars on their own. The Nazis developed the world’s first widely produced ballistic missile – the V-2 rocket – during the Second World War. They also created the first version of a type of cruise missile, known as the V-1. The two systems terrorized the UK but did not win the war for Germany.
Saddam’s experience with Scuds should serve as a cautionary tale for regimes that trust in this technology. It is not the game changer it seems to be.
There are many intelligent people in Iran’s regime, and they will want to create new threats for Jerusalem. They continue to traffic arms to the Houthis, as revealed by a recent shipment that was seized. The shipment included engines for drones and a wide variety of technology for drones and missiles.
Clearly, Iran has not learned its lesson. It will continue to go down the path of missiles and drones because it does not have much else to invest in. Israel should be wary of Iran’s asymmetric threats, such as plots abroad. However, Tehran’s conventional forces will need to rethink their defense technology in any future round.