Israel Facing Prospect of War With a Depleted Missile Defense
Israel’s multilayered, sophisticated missile-defense system is renowned for protecting its citizens. But the possibility of a new war involving Iran puts a heightened focus on Israel’s stock of ballistic-missile interceptors, which was significantly depleted in 2025.
The same goes for the U.S. arsenal of land- and sea-based antiballistic missiles, which provided a vital additional shield for Israel during the 12-day war with Iran last June.
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The United States helped defend Israel during the conflict with Iran in June with two batteries of land-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems and with several Aegis destroyers whose armaments include SM-3 antiballistic missiles.
The two allies’ air defenses worked side by side and seamlessly, by all accounts, with impressive results. Of 574 ballistic missiles launched by Iran, only 49 struck meaningful targets, according to a report on the June 2025 conflict by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA, a Washington research organization. Some Iranian missiles failed or struck open areas.
Israel and the United States tried to stop 322 Iranian missiles and successfully intercepted 273, an 85 percent success rate.
But the 100 to 250 THAAD interceptors launched by the United States constituted 20 percent to 50 percent of the Pentagon’s entire inventory, and the 80 SM-3 missiles used constituted nearly a fifth of the military’s stockpile at the end of 2025, according to a December report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“That was an impressive defensive effort, but it also showed our base-line stockpiles were way too low,” said Ari Cicurel, author of the JINSA report.
The Pentagon moved in January to quadruple the yearly production of THAAD interceptors to 400 from 96. But the manufacture rates for Arrow 3 and SM-3 interceptors made in the United States are painfully slow, experts say, around 24 a year for each.
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Originally published in the New York Times.