In the last day or so, two very interesting articles have been published in the Israeli English language press regarding the cost of missile defence systems of the USA and Israel and their performance in the recent massive attack on Israel by Iran.
Cost per intercept - US vs Israel
The first is about Israel retiring the US made Patriot missile defence system because its own David's Sling proved against Iran that it can do a better job for a fraction of the price. The article states that Patriot interceptors cost $6M while David's Sling interceptors only cost $700k. That's 12% of the price.
It was also revealed that Arrow II interceptors cost $1.5M and Arrow III interceptors $2M.
By comparison the THAAD system which is theoretically equivalent to Arrow III (but has not been proven in combat) has interceptors that cost $11.2M. This is 18% of the price.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-replaces-patriot-with-davids-sling-1001477726
Clearly the Israeli systems are immensely cheaper to use.
Interception rate - US vs Israel
The second reveals that US missile defence systems using the SM-3 interceptor for the first time in combat against Iranian ballistic missiles only had a 25% successful interception rate (2 out of 8).
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/389271
These SM-3 missiles cost either $10m (SM3 Block 1B) or $28M (SM3 Block IIA) each.
This is very poor performance compared to the 90%+ intercept rate of the Israeli Arrow II & III systems which stopped all but a few (exact numbers variously reported as 3, 5 or 7) of the 110-130 Iranian intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) fired at Israel.
Reportedly 50% of the Iranian IRBMs failed at or shortly after launch meaning Israel intercepted either 57/60 or 55/60 or at worst 53/60 IRBMs.
Patriot also has has a poor interception record over the years including failing to shot down drones and cruise missiles fired at Saudi oil facilities about 4 years ago.
So in summary, US designed and built missile defence systems are around 10x as expensive and immensely less effective than Israeli designed and built systems.
Strategic Implications
The price per intercept and interception rate of missile defence systems are immensely important and have strategic implications.
As noted in my earlier post, attacking missiles have substantial cost too with the larger ones such as IRBMs costing around $100M each but smaller, shorter range ones costing much less.
Using Israeli Arrow systems Israel completely defeated an attack costing Iran around $15 Billion with a spend of only $105M (60 x $1.75M (average of Arrow II & III)). Given Israel's GDP is 30% higher than Iran, and immensely higher per capita, Iran is going out of business fast attacking Israel and also achieved nothing other than humiliation.
But if Israel had relied upon US designed systems with poor interception rates the Iranian attack would have wreaked havok and cost $672M for THAAD or even more for SM3.
In a large scale industrial war (such as is ongoing in Ukraine) the side that can intercept the attackers's missiles more cheaply and with a high success rate is going to win.
Ukraine, using old and expensive US missile defence systems is on the losing end of this proposition.
Israeli systems are crucial to winning wars.
What are you going to buy?
The threat of mass missile attacks from Iran, Russia, North Korea, China and others a very real threat for the US, NATO and Asian allies.
The recent defeated attack by Iran has shown that Israeli missile defence systems work really well against the most massive missile attacks in world history.
Given the choice between very expensive, poorly performing US systems and vastly cheaper Israeli systems with excellent performance, which one will US allies and the US itself buy?
Please vote for my Hive witness. (KeyChain or HiveSigner)
I heard that Russia used at least one missile that was called "hypersonic" in attacking Ukraine. Do you know if this is a real threat to nullify systems like these?
Hypersonic is an over hyped term. It just means more than 5x the speed of sound.
The Iranians also called their missiles hypersonic because missiles of this huge size, mass and range generally travel more than 5x the speed of sound at some part of their trajectory, at least during re-entry.
Israel intercepted them easily.
The bit about hypersonic that is both very hard and very useful is manouevring to avoid interception at hypersonic speeds within the atmosphere. This means a non-ballistic trajectory that is hard to predict and thus intercept.
Some Iranian missiles fired at Israel were supposed to have this capability on re-entry. But Israel hit them anyway. Its Arrow III interceptor is highly manouevreable at hypersonic speeds.
It is not clear what Russia has is a truely hypersonically maneuvreable in-atmosphere non-ballistic missile.
The fact that Russia managed to take out US Patriot missile batteries in Ukraine says as much about the poor performance of Patriot than about the true capability of Russian hypersonic missiles.
It is notable that Israel managed to take out Iran's best Russian supplied air defence system (S300) with a single shot from a missile (which I think was an Israeli designed air launched ballistic missile which would also be hypersonic).
As to whether Israeli air defences can intercept Russian "hypersonic" missiles, that remains to be seen, but it is certainly quite possible.
At the end of the day the defending side in a long distance missile battle has the huge advantages that are getting greater with time.
As the missile is obviously heading towards the defender, advanced ground based radars and computers can quickly calculate even changing trajectories and put an interceptor close enough to the incoming missile that the interceptor's own sensors can lock on and hit.
By contrast the incoming missile does not know that an interceptor is incoming and cannot take anything other than pre-programmed evasive action. The attackers radars are too far away to detect interceptors and the incoming missile itself can't have sensors pointing in every direction to look for interceptors. This is especially true at hypersonic speeds due to plasma and hypersonic airflow.
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