Tel Aviv (Somalia Today) – Israel has begun rationing its use of high-end missile interceptors, turning instead to less advanced munitions to preserve stockpiles as a relentless four-week barrage of Iranian missiles and drones tests the limits of the country’s multi-layered air-defence system.
The tactical shift carries deadly risks, A Wall Street Journal report says. On March 21, two Iranian ballistic missiles scored direct hits on the southern towns of Dimona, home to Israel’s main nuclear facility, and Arad.
The strikes injured nearly 200 people after Israel tried and failed to intercept the projectiles using modified medium-range systems rather than its top-tier interceptors.
The conflict, which escalated sharply on February 28, has seen Iran fire more than 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel.
Along with daily projectile launches by Hezbollah in Lebanon, the sustained assault is forcing Israeli commanders into harder calculations.
“The number of interceptors of every type is finite,” said Tal Inbar, a senior analyst at the US-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. “As the fighting goes on, it goes down. And as it goes down, you have to make more careful calculations about what to use.”
Finite resources
Israel’s air-defence network, which it developed jointly with the United States, relies on three main tiers to stop threats at different altitudes and ranges.
At the lower tier is the Iron Dome, designed to intercept short-range rockets at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per launch.
The middle tier, David’s Sling, was built to counter long-range rockets and tactical ballistic missiles, with each interceptor costing about $1 million.
The upper tier includes the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems. The Arrow 3 is designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Each Arrow 3 interceptor is estimated to cost more than $2.5 million.
Israel entered the current conflict with its Arrow stockpiles already reduced after a previous war with Iran in June 2025.
While the military claims an interception rate of about 92 percent, officials are increasingly using software upgrades to push lower-tier systems beyond their original design limits and conserve the expensive Arrow munitions.
“We are trying to stretch it to the upper tier and distance the interception from the ground as much as possible,” said Ran Kochav, a brigadier general in the reserves and former commander of Israel’s air and missile defence forces, referring to recent upgrades to David’s Sling.
“It works well in some areas, and in others it doesn’t.”
The Iron Dome, originally limited to a range of about 70 kilometres, can now also shoot down longer-range rockets and drones. “Today, it intercepts rockets at a range of hundreds of kilometres as well as UAVs,” Kochav added.
Race against depletion
The decision to use less capable munitions shows the immense pressure on militaries across the Middle East as they burn through expensive, hard-to-make weapons to fend off mass-produced Iranian drones and missiles.
With every incoming projectile, Israeli air-defence operators, guided by radar-driven trajectory projections, must decide whether to let it fall in open areas or choose which interceptor to deploy.
The strikes in the south have deeply rattled the public. In the community across the road from the Dimona blast, some residents have moved into a large school bomb shelter, where they plan to remain until the fighting ends.
“This is not over,” said Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, 69, who lives near the Dimona strike zone. “We’re reminded every few hours with warnings on the phone and new sirens and blasts.”
On Thursday, another alarming bombardment set off near-constant sirens across the country and led to several missile impacts.
Supply chain strain
The United States and Israel have degraded much of Iran’s missile-launch capability, turning the war into a test of attrition over which side runs down its arsenal first.
But the rapid use of high-tech munitions is exposing serious weaknesses in the global defence supply chain.
Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, face similar threats and have asked Washington for additional interceptors.
To ease shortages, the US has flooded the region with counter-drone systems designed to neutralise slower-moving threats such as Iran’s Shahed drones.
However, stocks for the US military’s own Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems, which protect allied airspace, are running critically low amid a global production bottleneck.
US officials confirmed that at least one THAAD battery deployed to Jordan was recently damaged in an Iranian drone attack.
“We are vaporizing many years of production in the last couple of weeks,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Even if we completely maximize production with the forthcoming missions ramp, which we need to, it will still be many years before we replace what was just used.”
Defence analysts warn that the current interception model is unsustainable and risks depriving other active conflict zones, such as Ukraine, of vital air-defence resources.
“These are scarce national resources, and we need them for other parts of the world,” Karako said. “That’s not something that we can keep doing.”
