Iran launched more than 200 drones and cruise missiles toward Israel on Saturday in response to an attack on its embassy in Syria earlier this month. As the drones travel across the Middle East toward their targets, Israel employs a number of defense systems to halt its progress. Nothing is more important than the Iron Dome.
Iron Dome has been in operation for more than a decade and consists of at least 10 missile defense companies strategically located across the country. When the radar detects an incoming object, it sends the information back to the command and control center, which tracks the threat to assess whether it is a false alarm and where it might strike if not. The system then fires interceptor missiles at incoming rockets that appear most likely to hit residential areas.
“All of these processes are designed to protect against low-flying, fast-moving missiles,” said Ian Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado. This also makes it fully prepared to deal with drone attacks. “Drones can fly slower than these rockets, so in some ways it’s an easier threat to address,” Boyd said.
Things get more complicated if drones fly too low for radar to detect them. The biggest challenge, however, may be sheer volume. Israel has hundreds of interceptor missiles at its disposal, but the Iron Dome could still be overwhelmed, as it was on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel with thousands of missiles.
U.S. officials say Iran has fired a total of 150 missiles at Israel so far. Iron Dome has been actively deflecting them, although a 10-year-old boy was reportedly injured by shrapnel from an interceptor missile.
While the Iron Dome is Israel’s last and arguably best line of defense, it is not the only factor. The drones are likely Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones, which have played a major role in Russia’s war in Ukraine. These so-called suicide drones have built-in warheads, are designed to impact targets, and are relatively cheap to produce.
“In some ways, it’s not hard to eliminate them. They’re not stealthy, they’re not fast, and they’re not maneuverable,” said David Ochmanek, a senior defense analyst at the nonprofit RAND Corporation. explain. “In a way, they’re like air targets.”
These slow speeds and fixed flight paths, among other things, mean that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) must fly for several hours to reach their intended destination, leaving ample opportunity to intercept them.
“Because there were a lot of warning signs before the drones showed up, there’s probably a lot of fixed-wing manned aircraft that are watching these things, tracking these things and potentially trying to engage these things,” said Tom Calarco, director of policy think tank Strategy and Director of the Missile Defense Program at the Center for International Studies.