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The Defense Ministry is putting together a plan to spend \u201cseveral billion shekels\u201d (at least $800,000) on a new laser system. The head of Israel\u2019s space agency, Maj. Gen. (reserve) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, even said last week that Israel had achieved a breakthrough that would allow it to field a rocket-killing laser within a year.<\/p>\n
On the industry side, Israeli Aerospace Industries and Rafael have been working hard in recent months to accelerate development of lasers that can\u00a0shoot down incoming rockets and mortar shells. Rafael already has a \u201cDrone Dome\u201d it says can neutralize small UAVs with a lower-powered laser (see the video clip above), and the company says it is developing more laser-based defenses, although it wouldn\u2019t give details. For its part, IAI says it has an advanced prototype laser to defeat relatively short-ranged threats that has succeeded in multiple experiments. Higher-power tests are likely in 2019.<\/p>\n
Now, lasers are not a universal solution. Larger, faster, and higher-flying threats, such as\u00a0cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, require more power than laser weapons can feasibly generate today, although the technology is advancing fast. Even after megawatt-class missile defense lasers enter service, weather and intervening terrain can disrupt the line-of-sight beam in ways that wouldn\u2019t affect a physical, maneuvering missile. So missile defense experts generally see lasers and interceptors as complementary.<\/p>\n
Where lasers shine is against large numbers of lower, slower, more fragile targets: small drones, mortar shells, and unguided artillery rockets \u2014 weapons that Hamas and Hezbollah have in their thousands and tens of thousands. Hezbollah\u2019s arsenal is estimated at 150,000 rockets.<\/p>\n
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These unguided weapons are notoriously inaccurate, and Iron Dome does not engage rockets that it calculates will land in unpopulated areas. But each rocket that threatens Israeli troops and civilians still takes at least one interceptor to shoot down \u2014 and the interceptors, being guided weapons, are much more expensive than the rockets they intercept. If Hezbollah unleashed a large-scale barrage, while Israeli air and ground forces would seek to hunt down and wipe out as many launchers as possible before they fired, estimates say Iron Dome would still have to launch more than 30,000 interceptors. (The actual number of interceptors on hand is classified). Even if Israel decided to build that many Iron Dome missiles and have them racked up ready to reload, at an estimate $10,000 apiece, the total cost would be billions of dollars.<\/p>\n
By contrast, modern solid-state lasers run off electricity: Once you\u2019ve built the laser, the marginal cost of each shot is pennies, and ammunition doesn\u2019t run out unless the power does.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, because laser beams travel at the speed of light, they have a better chance of shooting down short-range threats whose low altitude and short flights make them hard to detect in time for a defensive missile to intercept them. A few years ago, for example, Rafael developed an \u201cIron Beam\u201d laser specifically designed to shoot down shells fired from within five miles of the Israeli border, which Iron Dome has struggled to stop before they hit.<\/p>\n