The deadly missile race in the Middle East

THE BALLISTIC missiles that arced from Yemen to Israel on October 31st set several records. They probably travelled farther than any other ballistic missile fired as an act of aggression, having crossed at least 1,600km. They were intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile-defence system above the Negev desert. It was the first time that Arrow, deployed for 23 years, had taken out a surface-to-surface missile. It was also the first ever combat interception in space, according to two Israeli officials. The incident is a small illustration of how the proliferation of missiles with growing range and precision is changing the military landscape of the Middle East.

Missiles have been part of war in the region for over 50 years. The Soviet Scud, a workhorse of the rocket world, was first fired in the final stages of the Yom Kippur war of 1973 against Israel. Huge numbers of Scuds were fired by Iran and Iraq in the so-called war of the cities in the 1980s. By one estimate, 90% of the 5,000 missiles let loose in combat between 1945 and 2017 were fired in the Middle East. Now the threat is metastasising in two ways. More people have access to more missiles. And the missiles themselves are becoming qualitatively better.

Start with the proliferation. In the 1950s Egypt began building ballistic missiles with the help of Nazi scientists. Israel followed, with French help. From the 1960s to the 1980s Soviet missiles flooded into Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other states. China supplied Saudi Arabia and Turkey. North Korea helped Iran, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. Later, America, Britain and France sent advanced missiles of their own. The result is that 11 countries in the region now have ballistic missiles (those which fly in a parabolic arc) or cruise missiles (which use plane-like engines to fly on flatter trajectories) with ranges of more than 250km, estimates Hassan Elbahtimy of King’s College London.

Just as important is the fact that states no longer have a monopoly on the technology. Over the past 20 years Iran has supplied drones, rockets and missiles, as well as the know-how to make them, to Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, sundry militia in Iraq and Syria and, most notably, Hizbullah in Lebanon. In 2007 Hamas had several hundred rockets, according to Israeli estimates. That jumped to 10,000 in 2014 and then tripled to 30,000 in 2021. Hizbullah’s more sophisticated arsenal went from around 15,000 missiles in 2006, the year it fought a war with Israel, to some 150,000 today. Around 400 of those are long-range missiles which can hit anywhere in Israel.

The result is that armed groups now pose a level of conventional military threat that only states could have done 20 years ago. “The danger of a two-front war for Israel”, argues Bruce Hoffman of the Council on Foreign Relations, “begins to assume existential dimensions.” Larger stockpiles enable larger and longer-lasting salvos. In the first Gulf war, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired on average around one Scud a day at Israel for just over a month. Hamas, though armed with punier rockets, went from a peak of 192 launches per day during a war in 2014 to 470 on the first day of a major flare-up in 2021 (that excludes smaller mortars). On October 7th alone it fired at least 2,200.

Numbers, though, are not the main problem. Hamas has scored relatively few direct hits on built-up areas. That would suggest Iron Dome, a missile-defence system for short-range rockets (pictured in action), is still intercepting around 90% of its targets, as it did in previous wars with Gaza. Of the 1,400 Israelis killed since October 7th, only four have died as a result of rocket strikes, according to a senior Israel Defence Forces (IDF) officer who spoke to The Economist. Israel’s missile-defence systems are world-class. Two of those were from heart-failure while rushing to bomb-shelters. The problem is that the missiles are getting better.

Consider Saddam’s Scuds. “You have a system that’s very expensive, very complicated to operate and terribly inaccurate,” says Fabian Hinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank. Those Scuds had a circular error probable (CEP) of more than two kilometres, meaning only half the missiles fired would be expected to land within that distance of the impact point. That made them good for three things, says Mr Hinz: showing off at parades, terrorising cities or delivering nuclear weapons.

In a paper published in 2021, Michael Horowitz, now a senior Pentagon official, and Lauren Kahn of Georgetown University showed that in 1990 just nine countries had “smart” precision-guided bombs, which use a mixture of inertial navigation, laser guidance and satellite signals to find their targets. Even large powers like China and India, and most NATO countries, lacked the capability. Then the technology went global: 22 countries had it by 2000, and 56 by 2017.

That included Iran. The Shahab-1 missile, a Scud knock-off, which Iran used to strike Iraq-based militants in the 1990s and early 2000s had a CEP of around half a kilometre. Today the Fateh-110, an Iranian-designed family of missiles, is thought to have a CEP of well under 35 metres, and perhaps as low as five metres with a reliable satellite signal—good enough to hit a large vehicle. It showed that off in January 2020 when it retaliated for the assassination of an Iranian general by attacking American troops in Iraq and scoring six direct hits on missile hangars. A suspected Iranian drone and cruise-missile attack the previous year on Saudi oil facilities was similarly on-target.

“That strike had huge geopolitical ramifications,” says Mr Hinz. Previously, most states that wanted to hit enemies far away needed an expensive air force; an unguided missile would be useless beyond 1,000km. “Now you have actors without an air force—or with a really terrible air force, like Iran—being able to hit the depth of an adversary,” he says. “That changes the strategic calculus.” The 2019 and 2020 strikes demonstrated that Iran, and its proxies, had a serious conventional deterrent against Israel, America and others.

Greater range also means the ability to attack Israel from a wider range of countries. Short-range missiles launched from Israel’s doorstep in the Levant will always be cheaper and thus affordable in the larger numbers needed for bigger barrages or longer wars. But Yemen is still a useful launchpad. It remains unclear whether the Houthis or their Iranian patrons launched the October 31st attack. That is part of the appeal. Iran’s revolutionary guards can blame strikes on Houthi militants. And if Israel were to retaliate in Yemen, the risk of escalation and political fallout would be lower than that of a war over Lebanon or Iraq.

Finally, precision also poses a profound challenge for missile defences. Iron Dome and other Israeli defences work by calculating where a missile is headed and intercept it only if it is landing somewhere important, like a populated area or military base. In 2006 Hizbullah’s arsenal was almost entirely unguided, so many rockets could be safely ignored. But over the past decade Iran has successfully sent hundreds of guidance kits, which turn regular missiles into precision ones, to Lebanon, say Israel officials, despite sporadic Israeli air strikes in Syria to interdict those supplies.

That means, in a future war—one that Israeli officials reckon is inevitable—a far greater proportion of incoming missiles will have both a specific intended target and a good shot at reaching it. Israel will have to expend far more interceptors in consequence. Each Iron Dome interceptor costs around $100,000. Those for David’s Sling, a separate system which tackles larger rockets, costs several times that. Israel may have to focus on strategic sites, like headquarters and air bases, rather than cities.

One way to adapt is to conserve interceptors by refining the algorithm which predicts where rockets are likely to land. Another is to use electronic warfare to jam navigation signals, as Israel is already doing—to the confusion of drivers relying on phone apps to get around. A third is to focus on cheaper means of interception. Israel has conducted several tests of a laser-based system known as Iron Beam. Its operational integration into the existing missile-defence batteries will not occur during this war, though, and it has shortcomings, such as cumbersome machinery and limited effectiveness in overcast conditions.

Israel can also call on allies. America has a large X-band radar in Israel’s Negev desert and its warships shot down a barrage from Yemen on October 19th. One missile from that barrage was even intercepted by Saudi Arabia, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel but shares radar via America. In June last year Israel said it had joined the Middle East Air Defence Alliance (MEAD), an American-led scheme that includes Arab countries.

“The success of this technology is that it’s been adaptable over the years to a range of different threats coming from different directions,” says Yair Ramati, an Israeli engineer, one of the original developers of Arrow and a former head of the missile-defence directorate at Israel’s defence ministry. “For over 30 years, there’s been an arms-race in which Israel’s enemies have been constantly building up their arsenals and we’ve been developing our defence systems.” That race shows no sign of slowing down. ■

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