Israel’s much-praised missile defence system, the Iron Dome, appeared to face significant challenges over the past three days as waves of Iranian missile attacks tested the limits of the country’s air defence infrastructure.
According to Muhanad Seloom of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, the current round of hostilities has exposed key vulnerabilities in Israel’s multi-layered defence systems. “The Iron Dome is not really known to counter such attacks because it is for short-range rockets and missiles,” Seloom told Al Jazeera. “But what we’re seeing are cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and even hypersonic missiles coming from Iran.”
The Iron Dome is designed primarily to intercept short-range projectiles fired from nearby territories such as Gaza or southern Lebanon. It uses radar and interceptor missiles to track and destroy incoming threats mid-air, usually within a range of 4 to 70 kilometers.
However, the complexity and volume of the current Iranian assault — involving a mix of long-range ballistic and cruise missiles — appear to have stretched Israel’s broader missile defence systems. In addition to the Iron Dome, Israel operates the Arrow 1 and Arrow 3 systems, which target long-range threats at higher altitudes, and the David’s Sling system, which is intended to fill the gap between the Iron Dome and Arrow.
“They have an integrated system of air defences and it is capable, but it can be overwhelmed — and we’ve seen that over the last 48 hours,” Seloom added.
While Israel’s defence forces have claimed to intercept a majority of incoming threats, images of smoke plumes over cities like Tel Aviv and reports of strikes near critical infrastructure suggest that not all missiles were stopped in time.
As tensions with Iran escalate further, questions are growing around how resilient Israel’s air defence network truly is when facing coordinated, large-scale, multi-directional attacks.
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