The Iranian missile attack in April pushed Israel’s air defenses to their limits, despite the fact that Iran did not use its best missiles and Israel being assisted by the US and other allies, Russian military analyst Yuri Lyamin tells Sputnik.
“A coordinated and more massive simultaneous attack from Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon can break through the Israeli air and missile defense,” says Lyamin, a senior researcher at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “I don’t think that Israel could seriously boost its capabilities in this field by now since so little time has passed [since the April attack].”
It is no coincidence, he adds, that the United States seek to bolster Israel’s missile defense capabilities by deploying additional US military assets in the region.
Regarding the capabilities of Israel’s famous Iron Dome air defense system, Lyamin notes that it, just like any air defense system in existence, “does not guarantee 100% protection.”
“On one hand, it can be overwhelmed by a massed rocket launch,” he explains. “On the other hand, drones can be hard to detect and the Israeli air defense sometimes lets some of them slip through.”
Lyamin also observes that Israel’s relatively small acreage allowed Tel Aviv to create a multi-layered air defense capable of repelling serious attacks.
“The downside of this is that various important military, government and industrial installations are located relatively close to each other, which makes them vulnerable if the air/missile defenses get overwhelmed,” he adds.