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iii

Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL:

THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE IN MISSILE DEFENSE

Jean-Loup Samaan

April 2015

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ISBN 1-58487-675-1
v

FOREWORD

Over the last years, missile defense has resurfaced 

as a major feature of the strategic debate in the United 

States and among its close allies. In 2010, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit of Heads of State 

saw intense discussions among transatlantic partners 

on the strategic value of missile defense alongside the 

traditional deterrence means of the Alliance. But if 

these transatlantic debates are for the most part still 

speculative, for many years, one close American ally 

has already faced the concrete and immediate challenge of defending its territory against missiles and 

rockets—Israel.

As demonstrated during the last clashes between 

the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian factions 

(2012 and 2014), missile defense is now a pillar of Israel’s strategic culture. Understanding this evolution 

demands an in-depth look at its political, military, and 

technical ramifications. That is the very purpose of 

this new monograph by Dr. Jean-Loup Samaan.

Based on archival research and numerous interviews with key players in Israel, Dr. Samaan provides 

us with one of the first comprehensive appraisals of Israel’s experience in missile defense. He reminds us of 

the uncertain development of the Arrow program and 

the historical skepticism from the military establishment toward a defensive posture. He systematically 

puts the evolution of this enterprise into its regional 

context, describing meticulously the proliferation of 

arsenals by states and nonstate actors. Moreover, he 

highlights the key strategic issues that matter, and will 
continue to matter, not only for the Israeli but also for 

the U.S. defense community. 

For this reason, the Strategic Studies Institute is 

pleased to offer this monograph on the Israeli Experience in Missile Defense and the manner in which it 

can impact U.S. national security interests.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

vi
vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JEAN-LOUP SAMAAN is a researcher for the Middle 

East Faculty at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defense College in Rome, Italy. He is 

a member of the International Institute for Strategic 

Studies and the Project on Nuclear Issues of the Center for Strategic and International Affairs. His areas of 

expertise include Middle East strategic balance and 

Gulf security diplomacies, as well as cyber defense. 

He was a policy advisor at the French Ministry of 

Defense from 2008 to 2011, where he was responsible 

for several net assessment studies covering transatlantic military affairs. While working for the French 

Ministry of Defense (MoD), he participated in various 

French-American strategic foresight exercises with 

the National Intelligence Council as well as with the 

U.S. Air Force. From 2009 to 2011, he was also an adjunct lecturer in international security at the French 

Institute for Political Studies, Sciences Program, and 

gave lectures to civilian and military audiences in 

various countries. In 2006, he was a visiting scholar 

at Duke University, and from 2007 to 2008, he was a 

researcher at the RAND Corporation in Washington, 

DC. Dr. Samaan has authored three books and several 

academic articles for various international journals 

such as Survival, Orbis, Comparative Strategy, Turkish 

Policy Quarterly, Politique Etrangère, and Internationale 

Politik. He is a regular columnist for the E-magazine, 

Al Monitor. Dr. Samaan is a former student of Arabic 

at the French Institute of Oriental Languages and the 

French Institute for the Near East in Beirut, Lebanon. 

He graduated from the Institute for Political Studies in 

Grenoble, and holds a Ph.D. in political science from 

the University of Paris La Sorbonne.

ix

SUMMARY

Starting in the 1970s, the Arab states and Iran embarked on ballistic missile programs aimed at overcoming the Israeli military superiority gained through 

the past decades. At first, Israel kept relying on its traditional offensive doctrines that enabled the launching of preemptive campaigns that would swiftly move 

the battles to the territory its enemies. The country did 

start cooperating with the U.S. administration in the 

early-1980s as part of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, but it was a decision based 

on opportunism rather than on a sense of urgency. 

The real trigger for Israel’s missile defense efforts 

was Saddam Hussein’s use of ballistic missiles first 

against Iran (1985-88) and then against the Hebrew 

State itself (1991). This led to the building of Arrow, 

a highly sophisticated system aimed at intercepting 

ballistic missiles.

But soon another type of threat emerged: in the 

1990s and the following decade, nonstate actors such 

as Hezbollah and Hamas rapidly acquired rockets and 

short-range missiles that changed the equation with 

the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In particular, Hezbollah’s performance during the 2006 war called for a 

new response. In addition to Arrow, Israel then developed Iron Dome. This new system would soon become 

the most iconic system of Israel’s military power as 

evidenced during Operation PILLARS OF DEFENSE 

(2012) and Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE (2014).

After having been looked at with scepticism, missile defense was now the object of political passion. 

This trend transcended Israel as the successes of Iron 

Dome were used by proponents of missile defense in 

the United States and in North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
x

nization (NATO) countries. However, this passion 

frequently misreads the strategic meaning of Israel’s 

enterprise. First, its military never conceived these systems as substitutes to its past offensive posture. Iron 

Dome or Arrow are mere complementary assets to the 

IDF. Moreover, there remain significant unknowns on 

topics such as the effectiveness of the systems in intercepting rockets and missiles or the extent to which 

they deter neighboring states and nonstates from investing in new arsenals. As a consequence, this calls 

for a cautious assessment of the Israeli experience and 

its potential lessons for U.S. and NATO’s own efforts.
1

ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL:

THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE IN MISSILE DEFENSE

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the issue of missile defense has become one of the most prominent features of Israel’s 

military debate. During the last military campaigns, 

such as Operation PILLAR OF DEFENSE (November 

2012) and Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE (July 2014), 

missile defense systems like Iron Dome proved crucial 

against rockets targeting Israeli territory. As a result, 

they have attracted increasing political attention. Suddenly, missile defense left a domain reserved to engineers and military operators to be the object of discussion by politicians and defense intellectuals. 

Against this backdrop, international media and 

policy circles now focus on Israel as the most advanced 

case to test the validity of missile defense. Countries 

like India and South Korea eye the Israeli systems 

as possible means to address their own security predicaments. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

(NATO), in particular, has dedicated a lot of attention 

to the question of Israeli experience in missile defense 

and the lessons to be drawn from it: the Alliance now 

looks at Israel’s reliance on this form of defense as 

a possible reflection of how its own posture on the 

subject is evolving. 

However, a careful study of Israel’s experience 

with missile defense reveals a history that is quite 

distinct from the mainstream narrative. Although 

ballistic missile proliferation in the Middle East 

started in the 1970s, only a decade after that the Israeli military establishment embarked on the path to 

missile defense. Moreover, it was initially due to the 
2

opportunity to benefit from U.S. financial aid in the 

context of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). All along, the establishment of 

missile defense faced technical, financial, political, or 

doctrinal obstacles.

In that perspective, this monograph offers a detailed account of Israel’s missile defense efforts. It 

stresses the regional events that triggered the development of Arrow or Iron Dome, but it also offers a 

look at the bureaucratic tensions that these new (and 

costly) systems produced. To this aim, the first section 

covers the first age of Israel’s missile defense history 

with the rise of ballistic missiles in the region and, as 

a result, the advent of the Arrow system. The second 

section highlights how the spread of rockets and shortrange missiles to nonstate actors in the Middle East 

called for a new answer, which eventually was Iron 

Dome. Finally, the third section offers key findings at 

the level of strategic studies on the Israeli experience. 

BALLISTIC MISSILE PROLIFERATION 

AND THE ADVENT OF ARROW

The root cause of Israel’s missile defense enterprise 

can be traced back to the 1970s with the first wave of 

missile proliferation in the Middle East. The 6-day 

war of 1967 had marked the advent of Israel’s military 

supremacy in the region. In particular, the way the Israelis decapitated the Egyptian Air Force on June 5 in 

only 3 hours engendered tremendous awe among the 

Arab states. By the early-1970s, Arab militaries came 

to the realization that strategic parity with the Hebrew 

State was out of sight, at least through conventional 

means. Such was the conclusion that led them, and 

primarily Egypt, to embark on missile programs. In 
3

other words, if Israeli air power was overwhelmingly 

superior, Arabs could only bypass their inferiority via 

missiles. As a result, Egypt launched its ballistic program in cooperation with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and by 1973, Frog-7 missiles (70 

kilometer [km] range) and Scud-Bs (300-km) went into 

service. In the midst of the 1973 war, Egypt fired three 

Scud-Bs that were aimed at destroying Israeli bridges 

along the Suez canal but none reached its target.1 Despite these inconclusive results, President Anwar al 

Sadat approved the further development of the arsenal. The Frog-7 was later upgraded with North Korean technological assistance and led to the Sakr-80. In 

the following decade, proliferation networks intensified, and Egypt was now on board with an ambitious 

project that associated Iraq and Argentina to build a 

1000-km range missile named Badr-2000. 

By the time Egypt had joined forces with Iraq 

and Argentina, Israel had started addressing the issue posed by these rising arsenals. But it would be a 

skewed observation to state that the Israelis merely 

answered the Arab efforts with the making of a missile shield. In the early-1980s, the first stages of Israel’s 

missile defense enterprise were closely intertwined 

with those of the American project. It was only after 

Reagan’s SDI was launched in 1983 that Israel started 

envisioning such a project. 

On March 23, 1983, Reagan gave his seminal 

speech on the SDI. For him, missile defense was a 

means to render the logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD) obsolete. In his vision, it was profoundly 

immoral to ensure the citizens’ safety through such a 

shaky principle as MAD, and, therefore, he considered 

the SDI a real imperative. In his speech, Reagan asked 

the question that drove his quest: “What if free people 
4

could live secure in the knowledge that . . . we could 

intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before 

they reached our own soil or that of our allies?”2 Although Reagan’s speech made references to America’s 

allies, the international reactions were lukewarm to 

say the least. Only the United Kingdom (UK), West 

Germany, and Israel accepted the offer to participate 

in SDI research and development programs. But Israel 

did it with extreme caution. To understand the Israeli 

cautious approach, one needs to put it into the context 

of the country’s strategic culture. 

Since the birth of Israel, its armed forces had relied on offensive doctrines rather than defensive ones. 

Starting in the late-1940s, Israel’s strategic culture had 

been shaped by constraints such as the absence of strategic depth and scarce manpower that left the country 

at the mercy of protracted conflicts. Because of these 

conditions, long wars would put the existence of the 

state at risk. To bypass these elements, Israeli leaders 

opted for offensive doctrines, enabling the launching 

of preemptive campaigns that would swiftly move the 

battles to the territory of their enemies. Even though 

the reality of an existential threat coming from Arab 

conventional armies vanished after the 1967 war, this 

scenario still remained a key driver of Israeli military 

planning processes in the mid-1980s.3 In a 1989 book 

dedicated to the offense-defense debate in Israel, Ariel 

Levite stressed this strong inclination among military 

planners for an offensive posture:

this attitude is characterized by contempt for defensive operations, heavy emphasis on the ephemeral 

nature of the defensive battle, and a surprising degree 

of ignorance regarding the doctrinal characteristics or 

the internal logic of defensive operations.4
5

This explains the initial scepticism toward a weapon system presumed to rebalance resources from offensive to defensive means. Contrary to the Reaganian 

dream to build missile defense to render nuclear 

weapons obsolete, the Israeli calculus was driven by 

a mix of opportunism and pragmatism: All along, 

the government faced tremendous scepticism from 

a military establishment that saw missile defense as 

strategically misleading.

Despite resistance, U.S.-Israel cooperation started 

the year after Reagan’s speech. The first step consisted of visits and exchanges between Israel’s Research 

and Development Directorate (MAFAT) and the U.S. 

Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), 

which was established in 1984. Interestingly, one of 

the strongest critics of Israel’s participation in SDI 

was neither technologically nor doctrinally based, but 

politically based. Sceptics in Israel argued that such a 

move would antagonize the Soviet Union, which was 

explicitly the target of Reagan’s project, and that Israel 

would diplomatically suffer from this alignment.

On May 5 1986, U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar 

Weinberger and his Israeli counterpart, Yitzhak Rabin, 

signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding. 

U.S.-Israel cooperation was to exclude the most sensitive and classified realms of missile defense technologies. First projects were limited: a $100 million contract was allocated to investigate a combined chemical 

and electrical propulsion scheme for projectiles fired 

by the railgun.5 Soon, the first director of SDIO, General James Alan Abrahamson, suggested to his Israeli 

counterparts that they start developing their own missile defense system that would address the specific 

threats facing Israel. It would rely on a land-based 

sensing system and a land-based missile interception 
6

system. For Abrahamson, the Israeli project eventually would contribute to the technological development 

of SDI systems. This Israeli project was named Homa 

(the Hebrew acronym for hetz v’ma’arekhet hatra’a, 

“Arrow and Warning System”), and its first program 

was the Arrow system, which was designed through 

a contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) financed by the United States.6

 IAI’s proposal was bold 

and innovative. As Brigadier General Uzi Eilam, then 

the director of MAFAT, remembers:

they [IAI] offered an eloquent and comprehensive presentation of a new high-powered intercepting missile 

with dreamlike maneuverability and an interception 

altitude of dozens of kilometres.7 

The Arrow system was to include an antimissile interceptor relying on data provided by an early warning 

radar added to a command, control, communications, 

and intelligence center and a launch control center.

Meanwhile, the proliferation landscape in the 

Middle East was evolving. Having signed the Camp 

David Accords of 1978, Egypt progressively withdrew 

from the competition for ballistic arsenals in the region. The joint venture with Argentina and Iraq to 

build the Badr-2000 was disbanded in 1989. The new 

competitor in the 1980s was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. 

In 1 decade, the regime would become the first ballistic power in the region. In July 1990, the CIA wrote in 

a memo, “Iraq has the most aggressive and advanced 

ballistic missile development program in the Arab 

World.”8 Like the Egyptians, the Iraqis had benefited 

from Soviet help in the 1970s and the 1980s to acquire 

Scuds. Iraqi engineers modified the Soviet model to 

develop the Al Hussein missile that would prove 
7

decisive in the war with Iran. Along with that missile, 

several projects were initiated to acquire long-range 

delivery systems, including one codenamed “Project 

Babylon” that intended to produce a system called 

“Supergun,” a giant cannon with a planned range 

of several hundred kms.9 In addition, Saddam’s Iraq 

possessed a wide array of tactical missiles (Frog-7, 

Ababil-50, Sajeel-60k, and Laith-90). 

It is worth noting that, although Israel had quietly 

started cooperating with the United States in the missile defense field, the first wake-up call in Tel Aviv 

came with the so-called “war of the cities” between 

Iran and Iraq that took place between 1985 and 1988. 

During that period, both countries used missiles 

against the enemy’s urban centers. Inside the Israeli 

Ministry of Defense (MOD), planners started looking 

at this conflict and its strategic meaning. 

One of the key decisionmakers in the Israeli MOD 

during that period was David Ivri. A general from 

the Reserve, Ivri had been Chairman of the Board 

of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) when Israel-U.S. 

cooperation started. In 1986, he was appointed Director General of the MoD by Israel’s then Minister 

of Defense, Yitzhak Rabin. Among other responsibilities, Ivri would be Israel’s chief representative to the 

U.S.-Israel Strategic Dialogue. Ivri quickly realized the 

significance of the “war of the cities” and set up a task 

force to study it. Between February 29 and April 20, 

1988, Iraq would launch 190 Al Hussein missiles on 

Iranian cities. Overall, Iraqi missiles killed more than 

2,000 Iranians and injured 6,000. The campaign over 

Tehran caused the displacement of around 2.5 million 

Iranians.10 For Ivry and his task force, the conclusion 

was clear: it was Saddam Hussein’s ballistic missile 

strategy that eventually made the difference and 
8

forced the Ayatollah Khomeini to concede the end of 

the war.11 What it meant for Israeli analysts was that 

Saddam Hussein was using Scud missiles to strike 

Tehran as new means of compellence. This is now corroborated by the release of Saddam Hussein’s archives 

that allow us to have a detailed account of Saddam’s 

understanding of the strategic value of ballistic missiles. In 1984, before the war of the cities started, the 

Iraqi leader was explaining to his Air Force officers:

Sometimes what you get out of a weapon is when you 

keep saying, ‘I will bomb you’ [and] it is actually better than bombing him. It is possible that when you 

bomb him the material effect will be 40 percent, but if 

you stick it up to his face the material and the spiritual 

effect will be 60 percent, so why hit him? Keep getting 

60 percent.12

For the analysts of the Israeli MoD, this meant that 

Saddam’s calculus vis-à-vis Iran could easily be used 

against Israel in the future. A few years later, David 

Ivri would articulate his views in a speech delivered 

at the Begin Sadat Center: 

the looming threat from proliferating ballistic missiles 

requires us to look at Israel’s defense doctrine. Deterrence is no longer a sufficient policy, not when Israel’s 

civilian population becomes exposed to long-range 

missile attacks.13

The words of Ivri were most likely those that he used 

to support the development of the Arrow system in 

the early-1990s. 

The Iraqi missile threat got even more concrete for 

the Israelis 3 years later. On January 18, 1991, only 1 

day after the start of Operation DESERT STORM, Sad-
9

dam Hussein tried to regionalize the conflict by launching 42 Scud missiles on Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Dimona, 

Israel. The coalition forces led by the United States 

tried to detect the Iraqi mobile launchers but failed. 

The material and human damage inflicted by the Iraqi 

attacks was relatively low—one Israeli killed—but it 

generated such a climate of angst in the country that 

it caused 15 heart attacks. The psychological effect of 

the missile bombardment revealed an urgent need for 

reassessing the Israeli military posture. As a former 

official from the Israeli Ministry of Defense explained:

The Iraqi strikes dramatically challenged one of the 

intellectual foundations of the creation of Israel as the 

homeland of the Jews that would protect them against 

all persecutions and attacks: the ballistic proliferation 

jeopardizes this belief.14 

But even then, both the military establishment 

and the politicians feared that this resort to defensive 

means was misleading. The fact that most of the costs 

were covered by the Americans mitigated the risk of 

bureaucratic resistance. Starting in Fiscal Year 1990, 

the United States contributed up to $52,000 million to 

the program. Several other bilateral agreements were 

signed: a Memorandum of Agreement in 1989 specified 

U.S. aid to the designing of an Israeli computer facility 

for the Arrow Program; another one in 1991 secured 

the U.S. contribution to the second generation Arrow capability. The first test of the Arrow missile was 

conducted in 1990. 

As the Israelis and the Americans were cooperating on the Arrow missile, the Iraqi threat was slowly 

fading away. With the international embargo ensuing from the Gulf war, the Iraqi arsenal declined. But 

even with Saddam Hussein subdued, missile prolif-
10

eration in the Middle East did not come to a halt, it 

only changed the distribution of main actors, with 

Syria and Iran being the rising challengers. Leaders in 

Damascus and Teheran would learn the lessons from 

Saddam’s use of ballistic missiles to acquire their own 

capabilities. 

During the 1970s, acknowledging his inability to 

reach strategic parity with Israel in the conventional 

domain, Syrian leader Hafez al Assad began his search 

for rockets and missiles. His first support came from 

the USSR with the purchase of the R-70, a short-range 

ballistic missile (SRBM) delivered in 1973 shortly before the war with Israel. Like the Egyptians, the Syrians also used their missiles during that conflict, but 

the technical limitations of the R-70 (poor range and 

accuracy) made it ineffective. A year later, the Soviet 

Union provided Assad with Scud-B missiles. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, 

Syria turned to other providers such as the North 

Koreans and the Iranians. Specifically, Pyongyang delivered Scud-B and Scud-C missiles to Damascus in 

the early-1990s. In 2008, a State Department report to 

Congress assessed: 

Over the past decade, Syria has focused on enhancing 

the capabilities of this [SRBM] force while also achieving self-sufficiency in indigenous missile production. 

With North Korean assistance, Syria has made progress toward domestic production of a Scud missile 

variant.15

Furthermore, in 2013, Defense Intelligence Agency 

Director Michael Flynn stated to the Senate Armed 

Services Committee that “Damascus relies on foreign 

help, mainly from Iran, to advance its solid-propellant rocket and missile development and production 
11

capability.”16 Despite efforts by both Hafez and his son, 

Bashar, Syrian indigenous capabilities remain limited, 

and its missile arsenal primarily relies on its Iranian 

and North Korean partners. Before civil war erupted 

in 2011, Israeli sources estimated that Syria had more 

than 50,000 rockets and missiles, including around 200 

Scud-B and 80 Scud C/D whose range could be up to 

700-km.17 Due to the conflict and speculation over the 

relocation of the regime’s weapons, current capabilities are hard to assess.

With regards to Iran, in the 1980s, its leadership 

launched its ballistic enterprise as a direct result of the 

8-year war with Iraq. The 1985-88 war of the cities engendered such national trauma that Tehran wanted to 

bridge the gap with any of its future foes. The Iranian 

ballistic program benefited from the same proliferation network: North Korea, China, and Russia. If Iraq 

was the leading ballistic power of the Middle East in 

1991, Iran was now replacing it. 

Opacity surrounds the state of Iran’s current arsenal. It is said to include hundreds of short-range 

missiles such as the Shahab-1 and Shahab-2.18 There 

is contradicting information regarding another SRBM, 

the Quiam, which allegedly was only tested once in 

August 2010. Sources assess “the Quiam to be based 

on the Shahab-2, with a range between 500 and 1,000 

kilometres.”19 The Fateh-110 is another SRBM whose 

development started in the mid-1990s. Although Iranians claimed its range was nearly 300-km, independent experts argue that it is more likely to be closer to 

200-250-km.20 Iranian medium-range ballistic missiles 

(MRBMs) include the Ghadr-1, a variant of the Shahab-3. The Sejil, a solid-fueled ground-mobile ballistic 

missile, was tested successfully in November 2008. 

Able to reach a target up to 2,200-km, the Sejil has a 
12

payload capacity that could accommodate a nuclear 

warhead. Finally, Iran has also developed numerous 

rockets such as the Fajr, the Zelzal, and the Fateh-110.21

Because of this evolving threat environment, Israeli efforts in the missile defense field in the 1990s focused on addressing the challenge posed by the rising 

Syrian and Iranian arsenals. In July 1995, a first test of 

the Arrow-2, an operational version of the Arrow-1, 

was declared successful. Arrow-2 was co-produced by 

IAI and Boeing. The interceptor aimed at destroying 

an incoming target with a fragmentation warhead. It 

would address the threat of SRBMs and MRBMs. Over 

the following 3 years, various tests were conducted, 

and, in light of the evolution of the Middle Eastern security environment, Israeli planners started considering that an increase in the funding of Arrow was needed. After consultations in Washington, U.S. Secretary 

of Defense William Cohen announced in March 1998 

that the U.S. Government would expand the project 

and provide funds for a third Arrow battery. “Israel 

has determined, in light of the growing missile proliferation in the region, that it would need three batteries 

to protect much of its population,” Cohen said.22 In 

May 1998, Israeli Minister of Defense Yitzhak Moredachai approved a 10-year-plan to continue development and production of the joint U.S.-Israeli Arrow-2 

system.23

The initial operational capability of the Arrow-2 

was achieved in December 2000. Batteries were then 

deployed at Palmachim and Ein Shemer, two cities 

flanking the Tel Aviv area. In August 2008, the U.S. 

and Israeli governments decided to move forward on 

the Arrow program by initiating the development of 

a new component, the Arrow-3. A two-stage interceptor, Arrow-3 was designed to destroy an incoming tar-
13

get with an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle. The explicit 

ambition of this additional missile is to intercept long 

range ballistic missiles (LRBMs) carrying weapons of 

mass destruction. This third version of Arrow experienced a successful test flight in January 2014.

Under the framework of U.S.-Israel cooperation, 

various other technical studies were conducted during the 1990s. One initiative worth mentioning was 

Project Nautilus, designed to develop a tactical high 

energy laser to intercept rockets. On July 18, 1996, 

the United States and Israel signed an agreement to 

produce the prototype weapon jointly. It was mainly 

funded by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense 

Command (80 percent of costs). But when the development was completed, decisionmakers assessed the 

system negatively, and the Pentagon decided to stop 

allocating resources to the program in 2006.

Soon, opponents to Arrow, and more broadly to 

Israel’s missile defense enterprise, raised their voices. 

Among them, Reuven Pedatzur, a security analyst 

for the leading newspaper Haaretz, wrote a muchdiscussed report in 1993 for the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.24 In his study, Pedatzur pointed out that 

the cheap cost of rockets and missiles would render 

the expensive Arrow program not only operationally 

irrelevant but dangerous for Israel’s military budgeting process. Added to the cost ineffectiveness of Arrow, Pedatzur underlined the technical uncertainties 

of missile defense. In particular, he feared the missile 

proliferation trends in the region would go much faster than the development of Israel’s program. In 2000, 

Pedatzur wrote:

According to Israeli military intelligence estimates, 

by mid-decade [2005], the Iranians, and perhaps the 
14

Iraqis as well, will have nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in their arsenal. And when that happens, the Arrow defense system will be totally useless, because its 

developers are not prepared to guarantee that the Arrow can intercept every missile fired at us. Which is 

very bad news, indeed, because it is obvious to everyone that Israel cannot afford to pay the price of even 

one nuclear missile hitting a target anywhere in this 

country.25

His arguments would soon become the primary criticisms used against the proponents of Arrow. Because 

the technological unknowns also meant financial unknowns, the U.S. contribution to the program became 

critical. It can be said that without U.S. financial support, Arrow would probably not have been developed 

by the Israelis. In his memoirs, Brigadier General Uzi 

Eilam, former head of Israel’s procurement agency 

MAFAT, confirms this: 

Opposition to the missile defense program within 

the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] stemmed from concerns that at a certain point it would start requiring 

large allocations from the defense budget. As long 

as the funding for development came almost exclusively from the budget of the US Strategic Defense 

Initiative Organization, the army’s resistance was not 

influential.26

Additionally, in 2008, the United States deployed 

an X-Band radar system in the Negev that completes 

Israel’s own early warning system.27 It also gives Israel the possibility to gain access to the U.S. Department 

of Defense (DoD) global satellite system. Though the 

Americans keep complete control over the system, 

it is hard to conceive a scenario in which Washington would deny the transmission of information to 
15

Israel related to the launching of a missile targeting 

that state.

Starting in 2001, the United States and Israel have 

also been conducting operational exercises such as 

Juniper Cobra or Austere Challenge directly relevant 

to these matters. The aim of Juniper Cobra, held once 

every 2 years, is to enhance the joint ability of both 

U.S. and Israeli military forces to respond to missile 

attacks. The scenario used for the 2009 edition was a 

missile attack by Iran.28 Austere Challenge is an annual air-defense exercise that involves more than 3,500 

U.S. personnel and 1,000 Israeli troops. It also aims at 

improving the interoperability between the IDF and 

U.S. European Command, using equipment such as 

Patriot air defense batteries and the Aegis ballistic 

missile defense ship.

The U.S.-Israeli cooperation on the Arrow was in 

many ways exceptional: borne out of the ideas of Israeli engineers, the program was entirely funded by 

the SDIO, at least in the initial years, for a customer 

that was facing internal resistance. This fact is counterintuitive with the contemporary narrative that depicts Israel’s infatuation with missile defense, but the 

enterprise initially went against the country’s strategic culture. (For U.S. contributions to the Arrow Program, see Table 1.) Mentalities evolved slowly, and by 

the mid-2000s, the domestic context would be much 

different when Israel started its own development of 

another program: Iron Dome.
16

Table 1. U.S. Contributions to the Arrow Programs

(Arrow, Arrow II, Arrow III).29

UNDER THE IRON DOME

The first phase of Israel’s missile defense enterprise was driven by the growth of ballistic arsenals by 

Arab neighbors and Iran. The second phase was to be 

characterized by the rise of a new threat, one coming 

not from sophisticated delivery systems but from rudimentary rockets. These weapons were not held by 

Middle Eastern States but by nonstate actors. Specifically, Israeli planners have faced over the last 2 decades 

a new challenge with organizations like Hezbollah 

and Hamas being able rapidly to acquire rocket systems that for a long time were the monopoly of states. 

Such a phenomenon demanded a second bottom-up 

$ in millions

Fiscal Year Total Fiscal Year Total

1990 52,000 2,004 144,803

1991 42,000 2,005 155,290

1992 54,400 2,006 122,866

1993 57,776 2,007 117,494

1994 56,424 2,008 118,572

1995 47,400 2,009 104,342

1996 59,352 2,010 1,222,342

1997 35,000 2,011 125,393

1998 98,874 2,012 125,175

1999 46,924 2,013 115,500

2000 81,650 3,014 11,9070

2001 95,214

Total 2,365,31

2002 131,700

2003 135,749
17

review of the Israeli military posture. Because the Party of God and Palestinian factions had long been using terrorist techniques such as suicide bombing, IDF 

troops were trained to react through counterterrorism 

or counterinsurgency measures. However the advent 

of rocket arsenals and their strategic use by Israel’s enemies made this military answer ill-suited. This triggered the design and development of a new defense 

system that would unexpectedly become the most 

iconic system of Israeli military power: the Iron Dome. 

Along with Iron Dome, a third missile defense system, 

David’s Sling, was designed.

Historically, the first nonstate actor to constitute a 

significant military threat to Israel was and remains 

Hezbollah. The movement was created during Lebanon’s civil war by Shia militiamen formerly affiliated 

with Amal and benefited from the support of both 

Iran and Syria. Although Hezbollah was ideologically a by-product of the Iranian Islamic revolution, 

it also arose from Israel’s military occupation of south 

Lebanon, a region primarily populated by Shias. In its 

first years, Hezbollah used classic terrorist techniques 

against the IDF such as suicide bombing that targeted 

the IDF convoys in the south of the country. But progressively its leadership turned to other options. 

On February 16, 1992, Israeli helicopters fired 

missiles at the motorcade of Secretary General of Hezbollah Abbas al Musawi, killing him and six other 

persons. Musawi was immediately replaced by the 

charismatic and then young Hassan Nasrallah. One 

of Nasrallah’s first decisions was to order the firing 

of Katyusha rockets at Israel’s northern cities in retaliation against the assassination of Abbas Musawi.

This was the first time Hezbollah launched rockets on 

Israel’s soil. 
18

Katyushas rockets had been first built by the Soviet 

Union in World War II. They include the BM-13 truckmounted rocket launcher, light BM-8, and heavy BM31. They have a maximum range of 20-km and carry 

a 30 kilogram warhead. The poor technical features 

of Katyushas make them rather ineffective: before the 

war of 2006, it was estimated that Hezbollah would 

need “about 73 rockets to kill one Israeli.”30 Nevertheless, Hassan Nasrallah soon saw the benefit of this 

arsenal and envisioned it as a potential deterrent. Although Palestinian Fatah had used Katyushas as early 

as 1968, no other organization than Hezbollah made it 

a strategic weapon. 

On February 27, 1992, only 10 days after the assassination of Musawi, Nasrallah gave a revealing 

interview to the Lebanese newspaper, Al Safir. Asked 

about the logic of launching Katyushas, he replied: 

We have to work . . . toward creating a situation in 

which the enemy is subject to our conditions. We 

should tell him: ‘If you attack us, we will use our 

Katyushas; if you do not attack us, we will not use our 

Katyushas’.31

In many ways, Hezbollah’s leadership was applying 

to the use of rockets the same strategic rationale as did 

Saddam Hussein: they were not only a means to circumvent the military imbalance with Israel, but also a 

concrete tool to coerce the Hebrew State. 

During the 1990s, Hezbollah’s military structure 

became increasingly sophisticated, with one combat 

unit specifically trained with rocket launchers. In addition to clashes with the IDF in the south of Lebanon, 

the Party of God would now use its rockets to inflict 

damage to civilian populations in the north of Israel. 

In June 1993, rocket attacks on Kiryat Shemona trig-
19

gered Israel’s Operation ACCOUNTABILITY. The 

campaign proved inconclusive. In the spring of 1996, 

a new cycle of escalation started with the IDF shelling the Lebanese village of Yatar and Hezbollah responding by launching rockets on Israeli cities. This 

led to the Operation GRAPES OF WRATH that also 

ended without a clear victory. In 2000, following the 

withdrawal of the Israeli military from the south of 

Lebanon, Hezbollah started a major build-up in the 

area. Using concealment techniques, its fighters deployed thousands of rockets along the border with 

Israel, sometimes hiding them in private houses. Additionally, the organization had acquired new, more 

sophisticated systems such as the Iranian Fajr-3 (42-

km range), the Zalzel-1 and 2 that are able to reach 

targets up to 125-km and 210-km, respectively. In 

2005, as France and the United States were pressuring the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, 

Nasrallah stated: 

I say, with the commanders’ permission, that we have 

more than 12 000 rockets. The real value and power of 

these rockets comes from the fact that they are in our 

hands, and that the Zionists know neither their number nor where they are deployed. They are fighting a 

hidden and an unseen enemy that could surprise them 

on any given day with this large number of rockets.32

A year later, the strategic significance of Hezbollah’s arsenal was no longer ignored. On July 12, 2006, 

and after 6 years of limited skirmishes, Hezbollah 

forces launched a salvo of rockets on the Galilea and 

ambushed an Israeli patrol driving along the IsraelLebanon border. For the IDF, the result of this fierce 

fight was dramatic: a Merkava tank was destroyed, 

eight soldiers were killed, and two others were 
20

abducted (Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.) In the 

late afternoon of the same day, Israeli Prime Minister 

Ehud Olmert gave his approval to IDF Chief of Staff 

Dan Halutz to set in motion a counterattack to “turn 

back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”33 While Israel’s naval forces enacted a naval blockade of Lebanese 

shores, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) targeted Hezbollah 

positions in Southern Lebanon, its headquarters in 

the Dahya neighborhood of Beirut, as well as roads, 

bridges, and the Beirut Airport. By its scale, this was 

“the first sustained modern air campaign conducted 

by a country other than the United States.”34 During 

the campaign’s first 7 days, some 2,000 jet fighter and 

attack helicopter sorties were conducted by the IAF, 

with often 40 to 70 aircraft operating concurrently in 

the airspace above southern Lebanon.35 In spite of the 

intensity of Israel’s strikes, Hezbollah retaliated with 

rocket fire against Haifa on July 13, 16, and 17: the first 

time that the city came under attack since the launching of Scud missiles by Saddam Hussein during the 

1991 Gulf War.36 Hezbollah’s rockets also reached 

Tiberias on July 15 and 17, and Afula on July 17. 

For Israeli strategists, the lessons were twofold: the 

Party of God had sufficient means to sustain a long 

campaign, and its arsenal was able to reach cities deep 

inside the Israeli territory. The hard conclusion was 

that intelligence agencies clearly failed to estimate 

Hezbollah’s military power.37 In particular, Hezbollah’s use of Chinese-made, Iranian-upgraded C-802 

radar-guided missiles against an Israeli missile boat 

patrolling off the Lebanese coast took the planners in 

Tel Aviv by surprise. The result was that Israel experienced more casualties on its soil because of Hezbollah than because of any previous efforts from Arab 

conventional forces. Colonel Gabriel Siboni from the 
21

Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies portrays this shift as the new strategic concept of 

Israel’s enemies: 

The size of Israel and the fact that it has no strategic 

depth made Israel’s enemies assume that high trajectory fire aimed at the Israeli home front in large quantities and with a minimum of variables would allow 

them to achieve their goal.38

Likewise, former Israeli National Security Advisor 

Giora Eiland emphasizes the fact that: 

the number of long and medium range rockets within 

the overall arsenal skyrocketed, which will enable Hezbollah to continue firing even if Israel occupies the 

entire area between the border and the Litani River.39

If the Iran-Iraq “war of cities” had been the first 

wake-up call that urged the development of the Arrow 

program, the 2006 war against Hezbollah clearly constituted the second wake-up call that would demand 

a response to the challenge posed by rockets and short 

range missiles. Nine years after the conflict, the number of rockets and missiles under the control of Hezbollah is difficult to know. In September 2008, Israeli 

Minister of Defense Barak estimated that Hezbollah 

had 40,000 rockets. One year later, President Shimon 

Peres suggested that the figure was close to 80,000.40

IDF officials interviewed for our research stated that 

the number was about 42,000 rockets, plus 4,000 short 

to mid-range missiles.41

The quality of the arsenal dramatically improved 

as Hezbollah acquired rockets using guidance systems 

and with extended range. During that same period, 

the arms race crossed a new threshold as Hezbollah 
22

started acquiring ballistic missiles. It is believed that 

the Party acquired through Syria M-600 SRBMs, a variant of the Fateh-110, which can carry a 1,100-pound 

warhead and has a range of 210-km.42 According to 

weapon engineers, the inertial guidance system of the 

M600 enables the missile to strike within 500 yards of 

a target at maximum range.

Furthermore, Hezbollah’s rockets strategy was 

quickly emulated by other organizations in the region, 

and first by Hamas. The first use of a Qassam rocket 

by Palestinian groups in Gaza can be traced back to 

2001. When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to 

withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas 

leaders claimed victory. Hamas leader and disputed 

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared “Sharon 

cannot evade the truth. The Qassam [rocket] is what 

forced the enemy out.”43

The Qassam rockets are home-made projectiles 

that easily can be made using material available 

in the public domain. The cost per unit amounts to 

less than $1,000. Due to their small size and relative 

light weight, they can be launched without the use 

of stationary launchers. They are what Uzin Rubin 

calls “man portable rockets.”44 According to Hamas’s 

sources, four models have been developed over the 

last years. The Qassam I ranges 3-km and consequently can only reach urban places like Sderot, the western 

Negev city. The Qassam II has a range of up to 7-km, 

which “only” enables it to target the city of Sderot 

in southern Israel and surrounding areas. However, 

with a maximum range of 10-km, the Qassam III puts 

Ashkelon in its reach. The Qassam IV, still in its trial 

stages (but which has already hit Ashkelon), would 

have a range of 15-km.
23

In his book, A High Price, Daniel Byman provides 

an insightful account of rocket attacks from Gaza during the previous decade. It shows how Palestinian factions followed Hezbollah’s pattern and increasingly 

relied on rockets as means to attack Israel. Main cities 

targeted were Sderot, Beersheba, and Ashkelon. (See 

Table 2.)

Table 2. Rocket and Mortar Attacks Fired at Israel 

from Gaza.45

But in addition to these indigenous capabilities, 

Hamas also acquired rockets from its state sponsors, 

namely Iran. In November 2012, for the first time, 

the Palestinian group used the Fajr-5 rocket. With 

a range of 75-km, the Fajr-5 is a major leap forward 

vis-à-vis the Qassams. Israeli experts assume the arseYear

Number of 

Qassam Rockets 

Launched

Number of 

Mortar Shells Israeli Fatalities

2000 0 0 0

2001 0 510 1

2002 17 455 0

2003 123 514 0

2004 276 882 9

2005 2,86 574 6

2006 1,247 28 2

2007 938 663 2

2008 1,270 912 8 (4 during Operation 

CAST LEAD)

2009 4,004 197

5 (all soldiers killed 

from mortar shells 

during Operation 

CAST LEAD)
24

nal is channeled to the Palestinians through the Sinai 

Peninsula and then the tunnels to Gaza. IDF officials 

usually argue that the smuggling of rockets through 

the Gaza-Egypt tunnels increased tremendously after 

the 2005 withdrawal. First, Hamas’s hold on the Palestinian side favored the construction of new tunnels; 

and, second, the collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s regime 

in 2011 and the subsequent instability in Egypt let the 

smugglers enjoy a security vacuum. Overall, the Israeli military estimates that Hamas has approximately 6,000 rockets in the Gaza Strip. Out of these 6,000, 

4,000 would be short range, 1,600 mid-range, and 100 

long-range rockets.

Along with Hamas, other groups with significant 

arsenals include the Islamic Jihad, which would have 

about 2,400 short range rockets, 800 Grad mid-range 

rockets, and 100 mid-to-long range rockets.46 But beyond the Islamic Jihad, there are numerous extremist 

fringes that hold some rockets and do not hesitate to 

launch them against Israel. Over the last decade, jihadi 

groups such as the Majlis Shura Al Mujahedeen, Jaysh al 

Umma, Tawhid Wa’al Jihad, and others have proliferated in Gaza. Estimates of their numbers and strength 

vary widely: in a publication from the U.S. Military 

Academy, the Israeli expert Benedetta Berti wrote that 

“the network consists of approximately 4,000-5,000 

members, although its alleged followers could be as 

many as 50,000 people.”47 Their arsenals are much 

smaller than those of Hamas or of Islamic Jihad. According to the Jewish Policy Center, the Popular Resistance Committee has rockets that, at best, can reach 

targets within a range of 9-km. The Popular Front for 

the Liberation of Palestine could launch Sumud rockets with a maximum range of 7-km.48 Furthermore, 

the relationship between these factions and Hamas’ 
25

military wing is difficult to evaluate, as these groups 

often recruit dissidents of Hamas disappointed by the 

diplomatic pragmatism of its leadership. 

The same way the development of Arrow followed 

the spread of ballistic missiles in Israel’s vicinity, the 

proliferation of rockets in Gaza and Lebanon triggered 

the designing of two new defense systems: Iron Dome 

and David’s Sling. A major difference from Arrow 

was that this time, Israel did not wait for a cooperation agreement with the United States, it initiated both 

programs on its own. 

By all standards, the pace of Iron Dome’s development was impressive. The program was officially 

launched by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in 

February 2007, and it took less than 5 years to see the 

first battery on the field. With Iron Dome, Israeli engineers aimed to build an air defense system able to 

intercept short-range rockets (between 4-km and 70-

km). One battery theoretically could protect an area of 

up 150 square km.49 The system is based on three core 

components: a detection and tracking radar, a missile 

firing unit, and a battle management control. An Iron 

Dome battery includes an ELM-2084 S-Band phasedarray radar, fire-control center, and three launchers 

capable of carrying 20 Tamir interceptors. The Tamir 

is three meters long and uses a proximity-fused explosive warhead to destroy rockets in midair. Each 

battery is said to cost about $50 million, with one interceptor amounting to $50,000.50

Following the development of Iron Dome, in 2009, 

the IAF established a new battalion dedicated to operating the system. This unit is part of the Air Force’s 

air defense division and is also the one responsible 

for formulating a doctrine for operation. The first Iron 

Dome batteries were deployed in October 2011 in the 
26

Southern cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Beer Sheba, 

in other words, the threat driving Iron Dome was the 

one coming from Gaza. Each Iron Dome was said to 

cost about $50 million. An additional sixth battery was 

fielded in September 2013 in reaction to the troubles at 

the border with Syria.

The other system, called David’s Sling (or Magic 

Wand), is designed to counter medium-range rockets 

(e.g., Iran’s Fatah 110) and cruise missiles that could 

be fired from 40-km to 300-km. The project was initiated before the Israel-Hezbollah war, but development 

started in late-2006 with a joint venture by the Israeli 

company, Rafael, and the American company, Raytheon. Rafael developed the interceptor while Raytheon worked on the command and control devices, the 

launcher, and the radar. David’s Sling can be understood as the intermediate system between Iron Dome, 

which addresses the long-range projectiles, and Arrow, which intercepts ballistic missiles. In November 

2007, the U.S. Congress approved the provision of $155 

million to Israel for the development of David’s Sling. 

As of this writing, its development is still ongoing and 

has faced challenges. Though the system initially was 

expected to enter into service in 2013, its schedule has 

been modified several times. It is now said to become 

operational around 2016. Field tests have been so far 

successful, but budget shortfalls threaten to jeopardize 

its delivery. According to an IDF official interviewed 

by Reuters, “We don’t have the money here to pay for 

the infrastructure.”51 Whereas David’s Sling is barely 

known outside of the world of missile defense experts, 

Iron Dome became widely popular in the spring of 

2012, with its use against rockets fired from Gaza. 

On March 9, 2012, Israeli forces eliminated Zuhar 

el Keisey, commander of the Palestinian Resistance 
27

Committee. No more than 3 hours later, the Islamic 

Jihad responded by firing rockets on Israel. By the 

evening of that day, cities like Beersheba and Ashdod 

had been targeted. About 70 rockets had been used 

in the first 12 hours of the fighting.52 In the following 

days of the escalating confrontation, the IAF used Iron 

Dome batteries to counter the launching of over 160 

rockets on urban centers in South Israel. Eventually, 

the success rate of Iron Dome during the campaign 

was estimated to reach 86 percent.53 The two following campaigns—Operation PILLAR OF DEFENSE in 

November 2012 and Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE 

in July 2014—confirmed the new foreground role conferred on Iron Dome. In the aftermath of Operation 

PILLAR OF DEFENSE, Yiftah Shapir from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies named Iron Dome 

“the queen of battle.” It was also reported that a “large 

number of recruits to combat units . . . had expressed a 

desire to be assigned to Iron Dome.”54 This signaled a 

new step in the evolution of Israel’s military mindset 

toward missile defense.

Such success also had financial implications. Facing 

budgetary constraints, Israeli defense planners turned 

to the Americans who, until then, had been primarily 

co-sponsoring the Arrow system. For the year 2011, 

DoD spent $205 million to support the development of 

Iron Dome, which equals 87 percent of U.S. financial 

aid to the other missile defense programs (Arrow II 

and III and David’s Sling).55 In 2013, the United States 

authorized $211 million in support. In the spring of 

2014, this amount dramatically increased as the Missile Defense Agency promised a transfer of $429 million in funding, more than double the amount from 3 

years before.56
28

In fact, a close look at the allocation of U.S. financial aid to Israel allows us to note that of $235 million 

dedicated to Israel’s missile defense systems (excluding Iron Dome), Arrow systems only represent around 

50 percent. These figures suggest that a major part of 

Israeli and American resources go to the funding of 

systems tackling the short-range threats; those coming 

from Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip and from 

Hezbollah in Lebanon, not from Iran or Syria. Overall, 

this steady increase in the level of U.S. support to the 

Israeli systems evidences the new centrality of missile defense in the U.S.-Israeli military cooperation. 

But it may also reveal a paradox with Israel’s missile 

defense: its most expensive system is the one countering the cheapest threats. This calls in the next section 

for a detailed discussion of the strategic lessons of this 

missile defense enterprise.

THE STRATEGIC MEANING 

OF ISRAEL’S EXPERIENCE

With the worldwide attention gained by Iron 

Dome, missile defense has now become a central 

topic of the strategic debate in and on Israel. The 

apparent successes of the system in the past campaigns triggered swift passion, if not infatuation, for 

the whole enterprise. In a dramatic tone, observers 

like Taylor Dinerman from the Gatestone Institute, 

started writing:

Between the fall of the Jewish Commonwealth to the 

Romans in the first century A.D. and the founding 

of Israel in 1948, Jews were remarkably easy to kill. 

Not anymore. Today, thanks to an innovative missiledefense system called Iron Dome (in Hebrew Kipat 

Barzel), it’s harder than ever.57
29

Such assertions reflect the current mindset, not 

only among the pundits but also among Israeli and 

American politicians.

There is a logic to that passion for missile defense, 

and we can mention three core arguments. First, for 

the decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the 

effectiveness of missile defense systems is a precious 

justification for the expenditures that have been dedicated over the last 3 decades to Arrow, Iron Dome, and 

David’s Sling. It plays a key role in budget battles on 

the domestic front in an era of austerity, which raises 

the level of scrutinization over costly military programs. It also helps make the case for increased U.S. 

financial aid allocated to these programs. The second 

reason is ideological: politicians expect Israel’s missile 

defense to sanctuarize the territory in order to reaffirm 

the principle of the Jewish State as the homeland able 

to defend the Jews against any persecution. Missile 

defense then becomes a precious tool for the government to reassure citizens regarding their safety and 

mitigates the psychological effects of missile warfare. 

Last, there is a strategic rationale behind Iron Dome 

that appeals to decisionmakers: effective missile defense systems provide them with new options against 

an attack. It can negate the ability of the attacker to 

harm the Israeli population and, as a result, allows 

the government to avoid launching an unnecessary 

ground operation to retaliate against its enemies. This 

last argument was salient in the aftermath of the 2012 

Operation PILLAR OF DEFENSE.58 However, this 

missile defense fad is troubling because it engenders 

various misunderstandings. We address four of them. 
30

Misunderstanding #1.

The first misunderstanding relates to the technical 

capacity of these systems. Believing in the sanctuarization of Israel’s territory, thanks to Iron Dome or 

Arrow, is deluding. First, it overestimates the current 

and future geographical coverage of these systems. 

As in many other countries, Israeli politicians ambiguously imply that the systems aim at defending the 

homeland as a whole, when in reality the existing systems protect first and foremost critical infrastructures 

and military bases. In 2010, General Gadi Eisenkot, the 

then head of the Northern Command, stated: 

the residents of Israel shouldn’t be under the illusion 

that someone will open an umbrella over their heads. 

The systems are designed to protect military bases, 

even if this means that citizens suffer discomfort during the first days of battle.59

The declaration caused troubles within the political 

class, in particular among the elected representatives 

from the Southern cities that faced most of the rocket 

threat from Gaza. The semantics of “theater” to “territorial” missile defense matter. This might seem like 

a minor change, but its operational implications are 

huge. Even according to the proponents of Iron Dome, 

a comprehensive coverage of the territory would require more than a dozen batteries whose affordability 

remains yet uncertain.

The other issue at the technical level relates to the 

exact effectiveness of the systems. If Arrow has not 

been tested in a real confrontation, Iron Dome has. 

Official figures on the system’s performances are frequently impressive. During Operation PILLAR OF 

DEFENSE in November 2012, Iron Dome is said to 
31

have achieved a success rate of 85 percent. Of the 1,506 

rockets fired at Israel, only 58 fell in urban areas. The 

results during Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE in July 

2014 were even higher. According to military sources, 

the system hit over 600 rockets fired, a 90 percent success rate.60 Understandably, these spectacular results 

led to political euphoria.

But there are some caveats that need to be considered. Several technical experts have expressed caution 

with the figures released by the IDF. In particular, 

Theodore Postol, a physicist at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, triggered a fierce controversy in 

the midst of Operation PROTECTIVE EDGE through 

several pieces he wrote in which he argued that the 

performance of Iron Dome was much lower than the 

official data suggest. Using photographs of Iron Dome 

intercept attempts, Postol affirms:

My best estimate is that fewer than 20 percent of the 

engagements I was able to get data on were actually 

front-on, and I have no information about the actual 

miss distances or whether the engagement-attempt 

geometries were close to antiparallel. Thus the statement that the intercept performance of Iron Dome appears to be probably 5 percent or less.61

For Postol, the limited number of Israeli casualties 

from rocket attacks is due less to the performance of 

Iron Dome than to both the small size of the rockets 

fired and the effective early warning plan that allowed civilians to find shelters. Because Postol’s assessment has been widely quoted in international media, it has logically caused a major controversy among 

the experts. The first criticism addressed to Postol 

concerned his empirical evidence, as his analysis is 

based on “grainy YouTube downloads of Iron Dome 
32

interceptions.”62 Uzi Rubin, one of the former engineers responsible for the Arrow program at the MAFAT, overrules Postol’s conclusion:

Postol theorizes that it is Israel’s civil defense system 

that does the work — that people, warned in time by 

sirens, take cover and are saved. Yet this does not explain why so few rocket strikes are registered in the 

large population centers that Iron Dome is designed 

to protect. Of the hundreds of rockets fired at the city 

of Ashdod to date, for example, only 12 hit residential 

areas. Are Hamas rockets that inaccurate? Why, after 

60 or so heavier rockets have been fired at Tel Aviv, 

has not one impact been registered to date within city 

limits, save for the debris of visibly intercepted ones?63

Such controversy is nothing new when it comes to 

missile defense, as it reminds us of the similar way Patriot batteries had been considered in the aftermath of 

the 1991 Gulf War. Initial reports suggested that PAC2 had achieved a 70 percent success rate, but later 

studies argued that the rate was closer to 10 percent.64

It is worth mentioning that Postol was already among 

those who rectified these figures. This dispute reflects 

uncertainties that should at least call for caution when 

looking at Israel’s missile defense systems. 

Overall, it is worth noting that the most conclusive 

results of Israeli systems have so far been achieved in 

the lowest tier. Iron Dome, which is mistakenly seen 

as the central, if not the only, node of Israeli missile 

defense architecture, aims at intercepting rudimentary rockets with a 4-km to 70-km range. In contrast, 

despite several tests, there are still doubts about the 

effectiveness of mid- and long-tier systems such as the 

Arrow or David’s Sling. 
33

Misunderstanding #2.

The second major misunderstanding or misread 

of Israel’s missile defense apparatus relates to its deterrent effect. During the Cold War, missile defense 

systems were depicted as factors of destabilization in 

the balance of terror established through the nuclear 

stand-off between the United States and the USSR. 

It was believed in Western countries that only deterrence by punishment—the threat of either conventional or nuclear retaliation—would prevent proliferation 

and a widespread arms race. That was the basis of the 

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. But in the case of 

Israel and the Middle East, this argument never really 

percolated. 

Israel’s missile defense enterprise was driven by 

the proliferation of ballistic missiles and rockets in its 

vicinity and the concomitant absence of a regional security system that would have regulated an arms control regime. But does it mean that Iron Dome, Arrow, 

and David’s Sling constitute means of deterrence or 

denial that could put a halt to the proliferation trends 

in the region? Open sources on the arsenals deployed 

and developed in the region tend to negate this assumption. According to United Nations (UN) reports, 

Iran steadily pursues the development of its ballistic 

missiles.65 Lebanese Hezbollah not only rearmed after 

the 2006 war, but its lethal means got better. In recent 

years, it started acquiring ballistic missiles, and it is 

believed that the Party acquired through Syria M600 

SRBMs, a variant of the Fateh-110, which can carry a 

1,100-pound warhead and has a range of 210-km.66

With regards to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Operation 

PROTECTIVE EDGE in the summer of 2014 revealed 

the capacity of the Palestinian organization to contin-
34

ue firing rockets on Israel, even after almost 2 months 

of daily airstrikes. This calls at least for a sober assessment on the deterrent virtues of missile defense. This 

might be explained by the fact that the ratio between 

the cost of an Iron Dome battery and a Qassam rocket 

is such that it does not dissuade Palestinian organizations. This issue had been perfectly stressed by Bernard Brodie in his classic Strategy in the Missile Age:

We must say . . . that in considering active defences, a 

realistic analysis does not first assume an offense and 

design a defense to counter it. In actuality the order is 

reversed. A defense is built, and the offense seeks to 

exploit its weak spots. And the history of the race thus 

far suggests that there is always a hole, an Achilles’ 

heel.67

If one can argue that Arrow, in the long run, may 

be able to deter by denial neighboring countries that 

would be tempted to launch a missile on Tel Aviv or 

Jerusalem, nonstate actors like Hamas or the Islamic 

Jihad seem not to obey to these rules of deterrence. 

This relates to one particular issue faced by Israeli 

planners: the heterogeneity of threats. For countries 

like the United States and its NATO allies, the missile defense enterprise is driven by a clear scenario of 

intercontinental missiles coming from a State like Iran, 

whereas the Israeli enterprise is driven by several very 

distinct scenarios in terms of projectiles (rockets and 

short-, mid-, and long-range missiles) and in terms of 

enemies (state and nonstate entities). That situation 

engenders several challenges to the establishment of 

a deterrence system: can this system apply deterrence 

tailored to each of its threats? Can nonstate actors 

whose rationality differs from state entities be subsumed to this system? Again, the deterrent values of 

Israel’s missile defense remain uncertain. In the end, 
35

if one looks at the Israelis’ experience and their ultimately pragmatic attitude to missile defense, the past 

controversy inside NATO about the balance between 

missile defense and nuclear deterrence could be seen 

as exaggerated and emotively charged. 

Misunderstanding #3.

This leads to a broader discussion on missile defense and Israel’s approach to deterrence in accordance 

with its strategic culture. A third misunderstanding 

vis-à-vis Israel’s missile defense enterprise is the extent to which it impacts the national strategic culture 

and, in particular, revises the IDF’s traditional proclivity to offense rather than defense. To assume that 

the successes of Arrow and Iron Dome could rebalance the offense-defense equation in Israel’s military 

posture is misleading because it puts aside substantial 

parallel developments in the IDF. 

At the doctrinal level, there has been extensive 

discussion that, following the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the IDF was implementing a new warfighting 

posture that put an emphasis on a fast high-intensity 

air campaign to defeat the enemy in the early stages 

of the war. This derives from the so-called “Dahya 

concept.”68

On October 2008, Gadi Eisenkot, then Israeli Northern Commander, declared in an interview with the 

newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, that “what happened 

in the Dahya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in 

every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there.” He went on to say, “From 

our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they 

are military bases.” Leaving no space for ambiguity, 
36

Eisenkot added, “This is not a recommendation. This 

is a plan. And it has been approved.”69 The speculations were exacerbated further after the IDF conducted Operation CAST LEAD against Hamas in the Gaza 

Strip from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009. In 

late-2009, a UN mission conducting an investigation 

into the 2009 Gaza conflict between the IDF and the 

Palestinian organization, Hamas, concluded that this 

Dahya strategy had indeed been applied in the Gaza 

Strip.70

Whether or not the Dahya strategy is part of IDF’s 

posture, this debate reflected the fact that the Israeli 

military was reemphasizing the use of disproportional force as a means of deterrence. In that sense, missile defense systems are merely means to prevent the 

aggressor from winning the fight with a first wave of 

its attack, and provide time for an offensive response 

to be launched. However, it has to be understood in 

the context of Israel’s very particular approach to the 

concept of deterrence. 

Whereas the United States and its Western allies 

conceive deterrence as a game of threats to prevent 

open confrontation, Israeli military thinkers do not 

disconnect it from the conduct of military operations. 

In fact, deterrence in the Israeli mindset derives from 

the effectiveness of its military campaigns. It is what 

some scholars call “cumulative deterrence.” Israeli 

Reserve Major General Doron Almog explains in the 

journal Parameters: 

Unlike classical deterrence as practiced during the 

Cold War, and whose success hinged on a bipolar 

standoff that held in check any impulse to launch a 

nuclear first strike, cumulative deterrence is based on 

the simultaneous use of threats and military force over 

the course of an extended conflict.71
37

From that perspective, the 2012 and 2014 operations 

in the Gaza Strip were not understood by the military 

establishment as a failure of the whole deterrence system, but rather as occasional clashes needed to sustain 

or to “restore” it. As Avner Golov from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies wrote, “achieving 

a state of deterrence was a central goal of Operation 

PILLAR OF DEFENSE, in order to restore calm to the 

south of Israel.72

This means that missile defense only marginally 

impacts Israel’s strategic culture. In fact, developments such as the Dahya concept evidence the on-going return to the original military posture built in the 

early years of Israel. In that context, missile defense 

is not a game changer, but a mere complement that 

widens the array of options for the decisionmaker.

Misunderstanding #4.

This leads to the fourth and final lesson from Israel’s experience with missile defense, which is its 

meaning for the United States and its NATO allies. As 

we discuss here, the political passion that surrounds 

Iron Dome generates several misunderstandings. As a 

consequence, the discussion of Israel’s missile defense 

is usually based on a distorted mirror effect. For instance, Karl-Heinz Kamp, the academic director of the 

federal academy for security policy in Germany and 

an influential voice in the transatlantic security community, wrote: 

the recent confirmation of Iron Dome’s reliability was 

of fundamental importance. In this sense, the implications of its success extend far beyond the Middle 

East, and will have an impact on the entire Atlantic 

alliance.73
38

The narrative implies that what works (presumably) for Israel will automatically work for NATO.

Indeed, the Atlantic Alliance now looks at Israel’s 

reliance on this form of defense as a possible reflection of how its own posture on the subject is evolving. However, the Israeli analogy is not relevant at the 

operational level. The first key lesson for NATO planners is that threats driving different actors’ military 

policies are not alike. NATO looks at potential midto long-term challenges that could be posed by ballistic arsenals, whereas Israel sees missiles and rockets as constituting close and immediate “existential” 

dangers to its territory. 

From a NATO perspective, what is at stake is the 

proliferation of countries with the technical capabilities and the scientific know-how to develop a ballistic 

missile arsenal. But in the absence of any obvious and 

indisputable threat, the prudent course is to avoid too 

specific a focus in current defense efforts. True, the 

Alliance’s contingency scenarios clearly identify the 

Middle East as the region from which missiles could 

be fired at NATO territories. In political terms, however, the Alliance has so far made no declarations of 

a more specific nature on the subject. At the 2010 Lisbon, 2012 Chicago, and 2014 Wales summits, the Allies agreed on an official but rather vague statement 

that ballistic missiles pose an increasing threat. The 

difficulty of obtaining a common threat assessment 

emerges clearly if one considers that some of the 28 

member states consider Russia the greatest threat in 

terms of proliferation, while others do not support the 

Alliance in identifying Iran as a threat.

From this perspective, the lesson from the Israeli 

experience is one of caution: the threat assessment 

driving IDF planning cannot be transposed in identical 
39

form to NATO. Although all stakeholders recognize 

that ballistic missiles have proliferated in recent years, 

NATO is faced with the potential threat of arsenals 

that, for the most part, are still in the making.74 The 

singular experience of the Israelis with missile defense 

is definitely worth exploring, but analogies should not 

be exaggerated. To overcome the current fad with Israel’s missile defense, one should remember the words 

from Bernard Brodie: 

that is not to say that effective active defenses against 

the missile are technically impossible, or that their development should not be pursued; it is only to point 

out that one must have extraordinary faith in technology, or a despair of alternatives, to depend mainly on 

active defenses.75

CONCLUSION

The findings of this monograph have implications 

for both scholars and practitioners. First, the history of 

Israel’s missile defense enterprise is a revealing case 

on the remaking of a national military posture. It highlights the ways in which new technological systems 

impact a strategic culture like that of Israel. This case 

also shows how the development of the Arrow and 

Iron Dome systems has now become a pillar of U.S.-

Israel cooperation. With major decisions expected in 

the future on the continuous funding of these systems, 

it is worth assessing the role they currently play in Israel’s military policy. 

But this monograph also aimed at offering a cautious look regarding the strategic added value of missile defense. We underlined how misreading the Israeli experience could lead to wrong analogies and false 

policy conclusions. The Israeli context is so particular 
40

that it can hardly be used to reveal similar lessons for 

NATO and the United States. As we have shown, despite the overblown political passion surrounding the 

topic, the Israelis never considered that these systems 

would rebalance their strategic culture from the offense to the defense. This matters for the practitioners 

in the U.S. national security community as well as in 

the NATO circles. 

The limitations and uncertainties about the strategic effectiveness of Israel’s missile defense mentioned 

before do not discount the value of these systems, 

but for those decisionmakers and congressmen that 

closely follow U.S.-Israel cooperation, this means 

that the United States should be careful not to focus 

its aid solely on this enterprise, as the annual trends 

may suggest. In a time of austerity, a discussion on the 

right mix of resources allocated to U.S. aid to Israel is 

worth having. 

Furthermore, U.S. and NATO decisionmakers 

should treat the Israeli case prudently. Although the 

successes of Israeli systems signify the operational relevance of defensive means against ballistic arsenals, 

they should not be used as leverage in the United 

States and transatlantic debates over missile defense. 

As we stressed in our analysis, the only similar type 

of threat covered by both the NATO and the Israeli 

projects is the one of long-range or intercontinental 

ballistic missiles. As of today, this discussion remains 

primarily speculative because one needs to wait the 

advancement of the Arrow system to draw concrete 

lessons from the Israelis. 

Despite these caveats, the story of how Israel built 

one of the most sophisticated missile defense architectures constitutes a precious case for strategic studies as it puts into light the challenges of operating a 
41

multilayered defense against heterogeneous threats 

or the complexity of combining missile defense and 

conventional deterrence. As the story of Israel’s missile defense has not yet reached its final chapter, it will 

be worth following these technical as well as strategic 

developments in the years to come.

ENDNOTES

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3. Michael Handel, “The Evolution of Israeli Strategy: The 

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Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, Alvin Bernstein, eds., The 

Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 534-578; Yoov Ben-Horin and 

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4. Ariel Levite, Offense and Defense in Israeli Military Doctrine, 

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6. Uzi Eilam, Eilam’s Arc: How Israel became a Military Technology Powerhouse, Brighton, Sussex, UK: Academic Press, 2011, 

pp. 204-241.

7. Ibid., p. 242.

8. Central Intelligence Agency, “Iraqi Ballistic Missile Developments,” Memorandum, July 1990. Source: CIA Electronic Reading Room, released under the Freedom of Information Act.
42

9. Eytan Gazit, The Middle East Military Balance, Tel Aviv, Israel: Tel Aviv University, 1994, p. 222. Project Babylon components 

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Armor, Despite Iron Dome,” Times of Israel, March 14, 2012.

12. Kevin Woods, David Palkki, and Mark Stout, eds., A Survey of Saddam’s Audio Files, 1978-2001: Toward an Understanding 

of Authoritarian Regimes, Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense 

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13. David Ivri, “Deterrence Is Not Enough. Israel Needs a 

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14. Interview with a former official from the Israeli Ministry 

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Office, April 22, 2009. 

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Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, April 18, 2013, 

quoted in: Paul K. Kerr, Mary Beth D. Nikitin, and Steven A. 

Hildreth, Iran-North Korea-Syria Ballistic Missile and Nuclear Cooperation, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service (CRS), 

2014, p. 5.

17. Duncan Lennox, ed., Jane’s Strategic Weapons Systems, 

Surrey, UK: Jane’s Information Group, January 2009, p. 176.

18. Steven Hildreth, Iran’s Ballistic Missile and Space Launch 

Programs, CRS Report for Congress, Washington, DC: CRS, 

2012, p. 15.
43

19. United Nations, Security Council Committee established 

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Experts submitted in accordance with Resolution 1984 (2011), 

S/2012/395, June 12, 2012. The Panel of Experts report was issued 

under UN Security Council Resolution 1929, which mandated the 

Panel of Experts. UN Security Council Resolution 1984 renewed 

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20. Hildreth, p. 19.

21. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military 

Balance 2012, London, UK: Routledge, 2012, p. 297.

22. William B. Reinckens, “Defense Sec. Cohen, Israeli Defense Minister Discuss Missiles,” Federation of American Scientists, March 27, 1998, available from fas.org/spp/starwars/program/

news98/98032703_npo.html, accessed on September 22, 2014.

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25. Reuven Pedatzur, “The Arrow’s Toadies,” Haaretz, March 

14, 2000.

26. Eilam, p. 213.

27. The Israeli radar can detect missiles up to 150-km, while 

the American one can go up to 900-km. 

28. Gili Cohen, “U.S., Israel Kick Off Joint Exercise to Train 

Troops in Battling Missiles,” Haaretz, May 18, 2014.

29. Jeremy Sharp, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, Washington, DC: 

CRS, April 11, 2014, p. 10.

30. Nir Shaviv, “How Bad are the Hezbollah Katyusha Rockets,” Science Bits, July 27, 2006, available from www.sciencebits.com/

Katyusha, accessed on September 22, 2014.
44

31. Quoted in Nicholas Noe, ed., Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, London, UK: Verso, 2007, p. 62.

32. Ibid., pp. 348-349.

33. Quoted in Byman, p. 253.

34. William Arkin, “Divine Victory for Whom? Airpower in 

the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 1, 

No. 2, Winter 2007, p. 99. 

35. Benjamin Lambeth, Air Operations in Israel’s War against 

Hezbollah: Learning from Lebanon and Getting It Right in Gaza, Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011, p. XV.

36. Byman, p. 253; Arkin, p. 118.

37. Yoaz Hendel, “Failed Tactical Intelligence in the Lebanon 

War,” Strategic Assessment, Vol. 9, No. 3, November 2006, available from www.inss.org.il/publications.php?cat=21&incat=&read=90, 

accessed on June 24, 2013.

38. Gabriel Siboni, “From the Second Intifada through the 

Second Lebanon War to Operation Cast Lead: Puzzle Pieces of 

a Single Campaign,” Military and Strategic Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1, 

April 2009, p. 26.

39. Giora Eiland, “The Third Lebanon War,” Strategic Assessment, Vol. 11, No. 2, November 2008, p. 12.

40. Ari Rabinovitch, “Israel’s Barak Warns of Growing Hezbollah Arsenal,” Reuters, September 10, 2008; Avi Issacharaoff, 

“Peres: Israel Knows Hezbollah Has 80 000 Rockets,” Haaretz, 

August 24, 2009. 

41. Interviews conducted by the author with Israeli officers, in 

Tel Aviv, Israel, February 2012.

42. Charles Levinson and Jay Solomon, “Syria Gave Scuds to 

Hezbollah, U.S. Says,” The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2010.

43. Quote from Byman, p. 177.
45

44. Uzi Rubin, The Missile Threat from Gaza: From Nuisance to 

Strategic Threat, Tel Aviv, Israel: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic 

Studies, 2011, p. 15.

45. Byman, p. 183.

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du Hamas?” (“Gaza : What Are the Military Capabilities of Hamas?”), Le Monde, July 10, 2014.

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the Threat,” CTC Sentinel, May 2010, Vol. 3, No. 5, p. 5. 

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org/prr/groups.php, accessed on September 3, 2014.

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Need?” INSS Insight, August 28, 2011.

50. Peter Dombrowski, Catherine Kelleher, and Eric Auner, 

“Demystifying Iron Dome,” The National Interest, July-August 

2013.

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be Ready in 2015,” May 21, 2014.

52. Uzi Rubin, Iron Dome vs Grad Rockets : A Dress Rehearsal 

for an All-Out War, Perspective Paper No. 173, Ramat Gan, Israel: 

Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, July 2012.

53. Ibid.

54. Yiftah S. Shapir, “Iron Dome: The Queen of Battle,” Shlomo Brom, ed., In the Aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense, INSS 

Memorandum No. 124, Tel Aviv, Israel: Institute for National 

Security Studies, November 2012, p. 45.

55. “77 millions de dollars américains pour le ‘Dôme de fer’ 

israélien” (“77 Million American Dollars for Israel’s Iron Dome”), 

Le Monde, May 17, 2012.
46

56. Yaakov Lappin, “US, Israel Sign Deal to Continue 

Financing Iron Dome,” Jerusalem Post, March 10, 2014.

57. Taylor Dinerman, “How Israel Learned to Love Missile 

Defense,” National Review, July 17, 2014.

58. See Shlomo Brom, ed., In the Aftermath of Operation Pillar of Defense, Tel Aviv, Israel: Institute for National Security 

Studies, 2012. 

59. “Eizenkot: Rocket Defenses Designed for IDF, Not 

Citizens,” Jerusalem Post, January 12, 2010.

60. Yoav Zitun, “IDF: Iron Dome Intercepted 90% of Rockets,” 

Ynet News, August 15, 2014.

61. Theodore Postol, “An Explanation of the Evidence of 

Weaknesses in the Iron Dome Defense System,” MIT Technology 

Review, July 15, 2014.

62. Uzi Rubin, “Israel’s Iron Dome Missile-Defense System is 

an Ironclad Success,” Reuters, August 8, 2014.

63. Ibid.

64. “Operation Desert Storm: Data Does Not Exist to Conclusively Say How Well Patriot Performed,” Washington, DC: U.S. 

General Accounting Office, September 1992, pp. 3-4; Theodore A. 

Postol, “Lessons of the Gulf War Experience with Patriot,” International Security, Vol. 16, No. 3, Winter 1991-92, pp. 119–171.

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15, 2014.

66. Charles Levinson and Jay Solomon, “Syria Gave Scuds to 

Hezbollah, U.S. Says,” The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2010.

67. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton, NJ: 

Princeton University Press, 1959, p. 202.
47

68. Jean-Loup Samaan, “The ‘Dahya Concept’ and Israeli 

Military Posture vis-a-vis Hezbollah since 2006,” Comparative 

Strategy, Spring 2013.

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70. United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the United 

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71. Doron Almog, “Cumulative Deterrence and the War 

on Terrorism,” Parameters, Vol. 34, No. 1, Winter 2004-2005, 

pp. 4-19, p. 8.

72. Avner Golov, “The Campaign to Restore Israeli Deterrence,” Shlomo Brom, ed., In the Aftermath of Operation Pillar of 

Defense, Tel Aviv, Israel: Institute for National Security Studies, 

2012, p. 23.

73. Karl-Heinz Kamp, “Missile Defense is Feasible,” Security 

Times, February 2013.

74. Jean-Loup Samaan and Guillaume Lasconjarias, “The 

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Washington, DC: Atlantic Council, Brent Scowcroft Center, 

August 2013.

75. Brodie, p. 221.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William E. Rapp

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven K. Metz

Author

Dr. Jean-Loup Samaan

Editor for Production

Dr. James G. Pierce

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Ms. Rita A. Rummel

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Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil