Interceptions in Jerusalem/Maariv
The achievement of the air defense system tonight was first and foremost the Arrow system, its operators in the Air Force, and the people who designed and built it since the late 1980s. About 100 ballistic missiles were launched by the Iranians and most of them were intercepted by the Arrow, and some by its American counterparts, whose development incorporated knowledge accumulated from the Arrow tests, which was available to the US Department of Defense as having financed the project to date with approximately 5 billion dollars cumulatively.
Boaz Levy, CEO IAI, began his career at the company in 1989, as a junior engineer in the design team of the missile, which was still an experimental development project at the time, until he received a boost following the Iraqi Scud attacks on Israel in 1991, which the American Patriot system failed to intercept. He served as chief engineer of Arrow-2 and later managed the Arrow-3 project.
"Already at night we started receiving responses from the labor levels we work with in the US, and also positive reinforcements from our customers all over the world, which was very heartwarming these days. For me, these were 30 years of assessments, excellence and development, decisions taken 30 years ago, by the decision makers in the defense system and the aerospace industry, and some of them were also mine personally as an engineer. All the scenarios we did, all the thoughts we had, everything we prepared for happened."
When Levy joined the Arrow project as a Technion graduate engineer, the Israeli Aerospace Industries still had to prove that it was even possible to develop an anti-missile missile. "The Americans told us at the time, 'Prove that you can hit a bullet with another bullet.' The Arrow was revolutionary at the time, and we proved its ability with the experimental Arrow-1. Arrow-2 was the first operational model, which we delivered to the Air Force on the symbolic date of November 29, 1998. And 25 years later it worked well tonight, together with the 3-arrow. The cooperation between them provides an optimal response to any threat."
The Arrow-3, which entered service a decade later, was designed to serve as an additional layer of defense, and to intercept missiles already in space, to allow enough time to launch another missile in case the first interception fails, a critical matter for example if Iran launches a missile at Israel Nuclear. "Not everyone understood the need to intercept outside the atmosphere, and open the hatch to space. Tonight we saw how important it is to intercept high and far. 30 years ago when we started there were other missiles with less capabilities. Scuds were then discussed as a target for interception, the lover we met tonight was not then. But together with our partners, we knew how to adapt the arrow to the new threats."
The IDF spokesman said that the air defense system achieved 99% success. Is this what you expected?
"99% success is phenomenal. That's a feat you don't usually guarantee in advance in weapon systems. Most of the arrow experiments were successful but there were also some that were not, and we learned from them. But you have to separate, in experiments you expect there to be failures too, because you learn from failures."
How did this success rate come about?
"It wasn't just the arrow itself and its capabilities, or the thinking of our partners in the Ministry of Defense and the US Department of Defense. We as a company salute the air defense system and the air force for the successful operation of this night. They functioned in a very saturated atmosphere, managed to cooperate between all means to provide an optimal response to each interception. You don't launch a missile and that's it. You have to plan which missile for which purpose and exactly when to launch. And all in a dynamic atmosphere with very fast changes. And they met this challenge."
Are there already initial lessons from the night? Why, for example, was there not 100% success?
"When 100 ballistic missiles attack Israel, it is really a serious event. Now investigating, it's not exactly that they missed. The weapon system worked perfectly. It was a crazy success, the system worked exactly as we wanted."
The Arrow is not a cheap missile, more than a million dollars for one in the case of the Arrow-3. This is a large investment from the defense budget.
"The answer we give is an economic answer. Such events are not judged by the cost of the system and its operation, but by the potential for damage. Imagine what would have happened without this system."