Arrow Missile Defense

On 14 March 2000 the first complete Arrow 2 battery was handed to the Israeli Air Force at a ceremony at Palmachim airbase, south of Tel Aviv; it was declared operational that October. Arrow was the first operational system designed and built specifically to destroy ballistic missiles. The program began in the late 1980s in cooperation with the American Strategic Defense Initiative and became urgent after the Iraqi Scuds of 1991. It was developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, later with Boeing, and largely funded by the United States. Each battery joins the Elta "Green Pine" radar, the "Golden Citron" command center and launchers whose interceptors destroy their target high in the upper atmosphere.

For years Arrow stood guard unseen. In the war that began on 7 October 2023 it was put to the test: on 31 October Arrow 2 shot down a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis from Yemen, and in November Arrow 3, which intercepts outside the atmosphere, made its first interception. Arrow batteries were central to Israel's defense against Iran's ballistic missile barrages of April and October 2024 and of June 2025.