Next week I am going to start a series on U.S. strategies for a defensive era. In the meantime I will put up some other things I have been meaning to post including this one, an adaption of a recent “Gilder’s Guidepost”, the weekly column George and I do for Eagle Financial.
More than a decade ago on a trip to Israel Richard V bought a tee shirt inscribed with the slogan above: “Don’t Worry America, Israel is Behind You.” The street vendor, handing him the tee with a slightly shy (for an Israeli!) and ironic smile said, “I know, it’s other way around, right?”
Maybe not. As things stand today, no nation is more important to the survival of the U.S. than Israel. If ever there should be an all-out missile attack against the U.S., Israel is the reason we will survive it—provided we stop looking gift horses in the mouth.
More to the point, it is thanks to Israel that such an attack is increasingly unlikely. Not only the U.S., but every nation on earth will owe Israel a debt of thanks for ending the era of the nuclear-tipped ballistic missile that has terrified the world since the first intercontinental missile system, the U.S. Atlas, was declared operational in 1959.
It was the ICBM, especially after the invention of the MIRV warhead (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle), that destabilized Mutual Assured Destruction. The MIRV raised the possibility that either the U.S. or the Soviets might be able to launch a successful nuclear first strike against the other by destroying the enemy’s nuclear arsenal on the ground.
Israel, more than any other nation, is breaking that threat.
The whole world by now knows of Iron Dome, the Israeli anti-missile system that has been routinely shooting down short-range rockets launched against it from Gaza and Lebanon since it went operational in 2011. What is less well known is that Iron Dome was merely the first step on a learning curve leading to systems that today are downing mid-to-long range ballistic missiles while still in space.
The Iron Dome itself is widely disparaged by Israel’s enemies as a primitive tool effective only against “home-made” rockets fired by underfunded guerillas. To the contrary even on the day it was launched the Iron Dome was the most advanced defense ever deployed against short range ballistic missiles. Critics whine that the system is “only 90% effective” but no other system has ever come close to that record.
Reports that Iron Dome was overwhelmed by the massive attacks on October 7 are mostly propaganda. Opposing some 2500 incoming missiles (Hamas claims 5000) with batteries mounting circa 1000 interceptors was bound to produce a less than 90% success rate. Nevertheless, damage from the attacks was remarkably light considering. Iron Dome has saved thousands of lives and forestalled probably many billions of dollars in damage to homes, businesses, factories, not to mention hospitals and schools.
So sophisticated is the system that the U.S., despairing of developing something as good under a U.S. weapons development system smothered in bureaucracy and “oversight”, long ago made the Israelis a deal. America would largely fund the actual missiles if Israel would share the intellectual property of the system. The U.S. did fund two Iron Dome batteries of its own. But no worries! The American defense establishment managed to shield us from the invasive anti-missile species despite having nothing comparable in actual service.
Now Iron Dome’s successor projects promise to liberate the world from the long-range ballistic missile threat.
David’s Sling, operational since 2017 is designed to shoot down medium--range ballistic missiles and rockets with ranges up to 190 miles. Developed in response the disappointing performance of U.S. Patriot missiles, the Sling has proved itself in combat repeatedly. In May of last year it downed two Iranian made Badr-3 rockets (with a claimed range of circa 160 km) launched from Gaza. During the current conflict it has downed at least one Ayyash-250 with a claimed range of 250 km. For Sling, like Iron Dome, Israel supplied the brains via its Rafael development group, while the U.S. put up the money for Raytheon to manufacture the weapons at scale.
More impressive yet is the Arrow system designed to intercept longer-range missiles during spaceflight including “regional-range” missiles and potentially ICBMs. The program originated with Israel’s decision to participate in the Strategic Defense Initiative launched by President Reagan. In the U.S., SDI long made only pitiful progress, snarled by political opposition, committee meetings galore, and outright ridicule at Reagan’s idea of “hitting a bullet with a bullet.”
That’s just what Arrow does.
On October 31, 2023, the Arrow-2 system intercepted a missile incoming from Yemen (presumably fired by the Houthis) at an altitude of 60 miles. That’s well above the stratosphere and the mesosphere at the edge of true space, making the encounter the first space combat in human history. Just over a week later, on November 9, the even more capable Arrow-3 system downed another ballistic missile from Yemen targeting the port city of Eilat, a distance of more than 1,000 miles.
Arrow, like Iron Dome and David’s Sling, is a product of Israeli brains and U.S. bucks with Boeing the American partner.
Artificial intelligence is dramatically accelerating progress in all these weapons, discerning decoys and mis-aimed incoming not with stopping, evaluating damage and the need for second shots, coordinating efficient response across multiple batteries
Israel’s contribution goes far beyond her engineering prowess, to matters of will. The U.S. could have blazed this trail, as President Reagan wanted us to do. Israel’s greatest gift to us, under the pressure of necessity, was that it did not give up. Now that Israel has embarrassed the U.S. and European defense establishments by doing what they proclaimed impossible, expect the laggards to catch up and start doing their bit. Without Israel’s example they would not be in the game.
One reasons the U.S. has lacked the will to pursue effective missile defense is the criticism that no such defense can be hermetic. Some incoming missiles will get through, especially in massive simultaneous attacks, and if the missiles are nukes even one is way too many.
This critique misunderstands the purpose of defense, which is not to make attacks impossible but unacceptably costly. Enthusiasts actually hampered Star Wars by claiming it would put an end to the terrors of Mutual Assured Destruction. To the contrary, the whole point, at least of early systems, was to restore MAD which had been undermined by the MIRVed ICBM.
That weapon raised at least the possibility that either side could launch a successful first strike, crippling the enemy’s nukes on the ground, making effective retaliation impossible, and attempted retaliation suicidal. If Star Wars could merely degrade a first strike, MAD would be restored and the first strike, absent insanity, would never happen.
Ballistic missile defense is not the only Israel technology defending America. Protecting U.S. Abrams M1A1/A2 tanks is Israel’s Trophy active defense system, developed by the Rafael organization for Israel’s Merkava tank. Merkava is arguably the world’s safest tank for the operating crew.
Merkava tank in Gaza
Trophy, uses AI computation automatically to detect incoming projectiles such as anti-tank missiles, evaluate the threat, and if warranted aim and fire all within milliseconds. Trophy shoots a precise swarm of EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) to intercept the incoming threat. The EFPs form a narrow kill zone to avoid injuring nearby friendly personnel.
With Trophy repeatedly proved in battle by the IDF, in 2018 the U.S. awarded a nearly $200 million contract to an American contractor working with Israel’s Rafael organization. Just three years later the Army requested urgent deliveries of Trophies to for the 400 tanks of four armored brigades.
Ultimately laser weapons will replace hitting bullets with bullets and even provide hermetic defense. High-powered lasers propagating at the speed of light, rapid-firing multiple “rounds” each costing not tens of thousands but a few dollars’ worth of electricity will do to missiles (and all aircraft) what the machine gun did to the cavalry charge.
This will happen but not next week. After several decades of agonizingly slow development, however, in just the past couple years the U.S., the Brits, the Chinese, the Russians, have all demonstrated truly impressive missile-killing laser weapons.
Nevertheless, once again Israel that may get there first for the same reason it was the first to reliably hit a bullet with a bullet.
As Edward Luttwak shows in his eye-opening new book The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons From the Israel Defense Forces, Israel, under existential threat, brings new weapons to the field faster than any other country. This is in part because it is willing to learn by doing, introducing early versions of novel weapons while other defense establishments are still critiquing, still meeting in committee, still making the perfect the enemy of the good. In a classic example of disruptive innovation, Israel puts the inferior technology on the learning curve, eventually to surpass once superior systems.
Iron Beam is already deployed
A perfect example is lsrael’s already deployed “Iron Beam” a relatively short-range laser weapon that will supplement Iron Dome. Today the Iron Beam lasers are in some respects inferior to the Iron Dome missiles. Still relatively low power, the beam will not destroy durable targets instantaneously, having to stay on target for a few seconds. Beam’s great advantage, however, is the low cost of each shot. No one want to waste a $20,000 Iron Dome missile on a $200 drone.
With Iron Beam operational, and more powerful successors already in development (Lockheed Martin is the U.S. partner), Israel is already on the learning curve. Our bet is that the IDF will have operational laser weapons capable of taking down regional or intercontinental missiles before any other Western Power including the U.S.
Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.