The Israeli military is on the verge of completing two straight years of operations across multiple fronts, the longest continuous conflict the country has ever endured.
Israeli forces were not prepared for the conflict. Rather, they were caught off guard on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas’s attack forever changed the course of the country. In the following two years, the Israel Defense Forces severely degraded several of its archenemies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran’s military and nuclear program.
The country simultaneously faced unprecedented attacks, the likes of which it had never faced before, and had to react in real time.
Israel has a layered air defense system that was heavily tested over the last two years. The system includes the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow, which are designed to intercept different incoming aerial projectiles.
Rafael Advanced Defense System, a joint Israel-U.S. defense company, is developing three variations of what it calls the Iron Beam. The system is a high-energy laser weapon system that can intercept specific projectiles. It’s meant to be a cost-effective way to supplement the military’s Iron Dome.
While not completely operational, shortly after the war began, Rafael gave the IDF prototypes to deploy the systems however it saw fit. The IDF ultimately used the Iron Beam in the north to intercept Hezbollah-fired drones.
“This was a time of despair,” Gideon Weiss, the vice president of international business development at Rafael, told the Washington Examiner in an interview at the Association of the United States Army exposition.
The young soldiers operating these were quick learners and provided feedback to the company about how it worked.
“There were a lot of very interesting operator observations about where to aim, how to aim, how to operate, how to maintain data in the course of developing this,” Weiss said. “And this was a present for Rafael, because we got all of this information from the users, and they were immediately applied to the systems that are now in production.”
The Iron Beam has its limitations. It doesn’t have the range of Israel’s other air defense systems, and inclement weather can affect its usability. Despite its high cost for procurement, each individual laser fire is “negligible” in cost compared to the highly expensive interceptor missiles they use otherwise.
The whole world has watched Israel’s military operations across the Middle East and Russia’s war in Ukraine, looking for signs of how warfare is developing in the age of artificial intelligence and the proliferation of drone use both for lethal and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (known as ISR) purposes.
The “No. 1” lesson learned from the war is that “we need resilience,” Weiss said.
“We used to be having short wars, six days, two or three weeks, or maybe a month and a half, but never did we think about fighting seven fronts at the same time in distances that are more than 1,000 miles away from home for more than two years. This was never fathomed. So the lesson No. 1 is resilience, both on the military side, as well as on the civilian side.”
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Weiss said the second biggest lesson learned is increasing the stockpiles of ammunition and air defense systems. He called it “laughable” when “other countries that are buying air defense systems are talking about quantities of dozens or a few hundred,” and he added, “If you have these small numbers of air defense missiles, interceptors, what are you going to do after a few days of fighting?”
Depleted stockpiles have also been a theme of the Russia-Ukraine war as Western countries have sought to aid Ukraine, specifically its air defense, over the more than three and a half years of conflict.