Since the start of the war in West Asia, Iran has launched 23 cruise missiles, 498 ballistic missiles and a staggering 2,141 drones at the UAE, according to the Emirati ministry of defence.
But the glittering towers of cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah stand largely unharmed, and fatalities have been minimal. That is a testament to the effectiveness of modern military air-defence systems, which track and target missiles travelling faster than the speed of sound and shoot them out of the sky with another missile, saving many lives and sparing homes and property.
The wars in Ukraine and now the Persian Gulf have highlighted the crucial role interceptors play in protecting cities like Kyiv or Tel Aviv or Riyadh, not to mention American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and other Gulf states. But the supply chain behind those interceptors has been strained for years, stressed by the war in Ukraine, past engagements with Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and last year’s 12-day war with Iran.
Missile defence experts are sounding increasingly dire warnings that if the war with Iran continues, stockpiles could become dangerously low, leaving allies around the world vulnerable to attacks.
“We started this conflict with a big hole,” said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defence Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The centre published a report on the depleting inventory of interceptors in December, before the current conflict even kicked off. “The hole got a lot bigger over the last month as we keep shooting these things off,” Karako said of the interceptors.
The dwindling supply of interceptors among the US and its allies is in part attributable to Iran’s tenacious ability to go on the offensive — launching drones and missiles at Israel, American bases and civilian targets in the Gulf.
Further, defence doctrine calls for two interceptors fired for each incoming missile, referred to as “shoot — shoot — look”. That means defensive stockpiles are depleted twice as fast as the offensive weapons they are shooting down.
In the current war, the US military coordinates air-defence systems with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and others. They rely on a variety of launch systems — including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) batteries, both fired from land, or Standard Missiles launched from Navy warships at sea.
The number of interceptors in a nation’s arsenal is a closely guarded secret. No country wants its enemy to know just when it might run out. But analysis of Gulf state defences suggest the waves of missile and drone attacks by Iran have sorely depleted the interceptor inventories in countries like the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Intercepting missiles has become a routine part of warfare for the US and its allies, especially Israel, for whom it is a daily part of domestic defence. The interceptor systems provide a security blanket but are not foolproof. Israel’s vaunted, three-tier missile defence system came under growing scrutiny after two Iranian ballistic missiles evaded air defences near Israel’s main nuclear research facility and reactor last month.
Even when missiles are intercepted, civilians and property are not necessarily out of harm’s way. Falling wreckage from the collision of two missiles can rain down on towns and cities; debris from an intercepted missile killed two people in Abu Dhabi last month.
The rise of cheap drones has complicated the math for militaries using expensive interceptors. An adversary can attack with one-way drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, forcing its enemy to deploy multimillion-dollar air-defence systems to repel them. And the drones are much more easily and rapidly replaced.
A ceasefire with Iran would not completely solve the interceptor shortage, experts said.
Shortages in interceptor inventories are a global challenge. That was most acutely obvious in Ukraine after Russia invaded four years ago, launching large volleys of missiles, and later drones, at Ukrainian towns and cities, bombardments that continue to this day.
The complexity of the interceptor systems makes them hard to mass produce quickly, said Tal Inbar, an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, a non-profit based in Virginia.
New York Times News Service