JERUSALEM—Israel on Thursday successfully tested for the first time its Arrow 3 missile interceptor, the upper tier of a multi-layered defense system aimed at blocking Iranian nuclear-armed missiles and other threats.
The Arrow 3 is programmed to intercept long-range missiles above the atmosphere. Israeli defense officials explained that ballistic missiles, when they reenter the atmosphere, can separate, buckshot fashion, into several smaller missiles, making interception much more difficult. Interception above the atmosphere avoids that possibility and keeps the contents of the incoming missile’s warhead, nuclear or chemical, if they explode in mid-air, that much further from Israeli territory.
The interceptor does not contain explosives in its warhead and is intended to destroy the incoming missile by impact. A defense official said that the interceptor fired today hit the target missile, fired from a warplane, "dead center."
The test comes a year after a previous test failed because the interceptor was unable to lock onto its target and was therefore not launched. The lessons learned from that failure, officials said, accounted for Thursday’s success.
The Arrow 3 was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Missile Defense Agency and Boeing. Each Arrow 3 costs an estimated $2.2 million. Its ongoing improvements will doubtless be aimed at keeping pace with Iran’s development of ballistic missiles.
Incoming long-range missiles, whose trajectories do not go above the atmosphere, would be intercepted by the Arrow 2 missile, likewise developed with American participation, and which is already operational.
The first element in Israel’s three-tier defense against high-trajectory fire is the Iron Dome anti-rocket system, which has proven itself spectacularly in repeated clashes with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel claims the system intercepted more than 90 percent of the hundreds of rockets that would have hit inhabited areas, thus sparing the country casualties and damage. The system is constantly being improved to meet increased sophistication in rocketry and attempts by Hamas to overwhelm Iron Dome by firing large salvos. Israel’s major challenge in this area is Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is said to possess 150,000 short-range rockets and several thousand longer range guided missiles.
Israel’s middle tier defense element, known as David’s Sling, is still in the development stage. It is aimed at intercepting mid-range missiles.
The last major war fought by Israel, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, was basically a tank war involving thousands of tanks. Only a handful of missiles were fired by the Arab armies. Today the major threat facing Israel is not tanks but high trajectory weapons, which puts urban areas on the front line. Israel sees its ability to intercept incoming missile fire as providing vital time for its powerful air force to strike.