What America’s Iron Dome effort should learn from Israel’s air defense systems
Israel’s history of developing new air defenses to defend against emerging threats is closely entwined with the US experience in air defenses.
Rockets launched towards Israel from the northern Gaza Strip and response from the Israeli missile defense system known as the Iron Dome leave streaks through the sky on May 14, 2021 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo by Fatima Shbair/Getty Images)
On Jan. 27 President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at creating “a next-generation missile defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks,” something he dubbed an “Iron Dome for America.”
That term references the well-known short range Israeli air defense system that has been effective in countering thousands of rocket, and other types of aerial attacks on Israel. The main difference between the Israeli experience, and what the White House is embarking upon, is the fact that the US faces much larger global threats on an exponentially larger scale. Israel is less than one percent the size of the US.
Still, there are absolutely lessons the Pentagon can, and should, learn from Israel’s experience with a multi-layered missile defense network — clearly the inspiration behind Trump’s push.
Israel’s history of developing new air defenses to defend against emerging threats is closely entwined with the US experience in air defenses. Israel’s Arrow missile program has its origins in Israel’s partnership in the US Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s. In 1991, after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the US deployment for Operation Desert Storm, the US deployed Patriot batteries to Israel to defend against Iraqi Scud missiles. As the Scud missile threat materialized, Israel realized how vulnerable it was and then moved to create the Israel Missile Defense Organization, which became the main body for accelerating work with the US on air defenses.
For more coverage of Trump’s Iron Dome executive order, click here.
Israel’s experience in deploying air defenses illustrates how long it took to keep up with the emerging threats. Despite starting in the 1980s, it wasn’t until 1998 that the Israeli Air Force received the first Arrow 2 missiles. Iron Dome was started in the wake of the 2006 Hezbollah war, when Israel’s home front was battered by rocket fire; It only became operational in 2011. Israel also developed David’s Sling, designed to be the medium range interceptor between Iron Dome and Arrow, in cooperation with the US. Development began in 2006 and it was operational by 2017.
Still, the systems have shown themselves to work. Iron Dome became incredibly successful over the years, protecting Israel first against existing rocket threats from Hamas and Hezbollah, and eventually from new emerging threats such as drones and cruise missiles. David’s Sling notched its first success in 2023, stopping a missile aimed at Tel Aviv. Arrow 3, the latest operational Arrow system, achieved its first war-time successful interception in November 2023 during Israel’s recent war.
The growing threat of drones is one area that the Israeli experience also informs the US challenge. In the recent war Israel faced threats from up to seven fronts, including Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. Long range drones were used by Iran and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. These kinds of drone threats, which can occur over thousands of miles, are one that the US needs to confront.
Cartels could use drones, as well as terrorist groups such as the Houthis in Yemen. In addition, drone threats could become part of a conflict in the Pacific. Israel has used every means to shoot down drones, from scrambling F-16s and attack helicopters to using air defense interceptors. Now Israel is moving toward laser air defenses, another type of technology that could inform US decision making on this front.
The good news is, while Trump may want everything built in the US, there are ways to tie into the Israeli systems already in use — much of which, it must be noted, American dollars helped fund R&D on.
For instance, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems works closely with Raytheon, its US partner, on David’s Sling and Iron Dome. The interceptors for these systems are called Skyceptor and Skyhunter, respectively, in the US; the David’s Sling interceptors are similar to the Patriot PAC-3 and can be used in Patriot batteries. Recent sales of Arrow and David’s Sling to Germany and Finland also illustrate how there is a growing market for these systems. Any new US investment in aerial defense will thus benefit from the Israeli experience because new systems could be deployed to allies abroad.
What this means is that the four-decade legacy of joint development of these systems can easily plug-in to the US drive for new air defenses to confront next-generation threats. And that is another key thing the White House has to keep in mind: The threats are going to keep mutating.
Adversaries are already rolling out so many types of threats that keeping up with them is a hurdle. Intercepting ballistic missiles or maneuvering missiles, drones and cruise missiles is not the only problem. As Iran showed during its two attacks on Israel in 2024, the main goal is to launch so many missiles that they can overwhelm air defenses. Therefore, building a new system is not the only challenge. Israel’s experience has shown that the second problem to overcome is to have large numbers of interceptors and different types of them to confront all the threats — building up production is going to be key.
The US will need to move quickly if it wants to build on existing systems, including existing cooperation with Israel, to roll out Trump’s vision of an American Iron Dome.
