Threat from the Skies

Maj. Gen. Atanu Pattanaik (retd)

At about 6:30 am local time (4:30 a.m. GMT) on 7 October 2023, almost exactly 50 years and a day after the Yom Kippur War began on 6 October 1973, Palestinian group Hamas fired a huge barrage of rockets across southern Israel. Hamas said it had fired 5,000 rockets in a first barrage though Israel’s military estimates that possibly around 2,500 rockets were fired. A significant number of the Hamas missiles penetrated Israeli defences, inflicting extensive damage and casualties. Smoke billowed over residential Israeli areas and people sheltered behind buildings as sirens sounded overhead. At least one woman was reported killed by the rockets.

Since its formation as a nation-state in 1948, Israel has lived under constant threat of attack from hostile neighbours. Vigil is at the utmost, including a seemingly impregnable Blue Line protecting its northern borders with Lebanon and a barrier wall fortified with watch towers separating it from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Drones, satellites and the famed air defence system Iron Dome protect it from intermittent rocket or drone attacks launched by Hamas or other groups such as Islamic Jihad and sometimes by Hezbollah who dominate South Lebanon. Israel has at least 10 Iron Dome batteries in operation, each containing 60 to 80 interceptor missiles. Each of those missiles costs about USD 60,000. In previous attacks involving smaller numbers of missiles and rockets, Iron Dome was 90 per cent effective against a range of threats.

So, why was the system less effective against the October 7 Hamas attacks?

It is a simple question of numbers. Hamas fired several thousand missiles, and Israel had less than a thousand interceptors in the field ready to counter them. Even if Iron Dome was 100 per cent effective against the incoming threats, the very large number of Hamas missiles meant some were going to get through. The Hamas attacks illustrate very clearly that even the best air defence systems can be overwhelmed if they are overmatched by the number of threats they have to counter.

The Hamas attack will have repercussions for all of the world’s major military powers. It clearly illustrates the need for air defence systems that are much more effective in two important ways. First, there is the need for a much deeper arsenal of defensive weapons that can address very large numbers of missile threats. Second, the cost per defensive weapon needs to be reduced significantly.

Against the backdrop of this dramatic and most spectacular attack by Hamas, let us understand and evaluate the issues of air threats and more specifically, ground-based air defence systems that can neutralise and counter these airborne threats in real-time.

Barak-2 MR-SAM

Evolving Threat from the Skies

Mentions of threats from the skies exist from ancient times, from Indra’s Vajra as mentioned in the Rig Veda and Puranas of Hindu mythology to the thunderbolts of the Greek sky god Zeus or the sky god Marduk (Bel) in Sumerian cosmology and the sky god Perun in Slavic mythology. Along with threats, there is also the chronology of protection from those threats from above, such as the Brahmadanda, a weapon of self-defence, created by Brahma. It was only to be possessed by Brahmanas and its powers were dependent on its owner. The weapon was a rod capable of absorbing any incoming attack towards its owner. When Vishwamitra, in a fit of anger, unleashed the Brahmastra onto Vasishtha, it was his Brahmadanda that protected him from the lethal weapon.

Mythology remained what it is, myths, till man took to the skies. Beginning with World War I, as aircraft and missile technologies evolved, so too have the strategies and systems designed to defend against them. Systems for ground-based air defence are essential to a nation’s defence. These are the sky’s goalkeepers. While the term ground-based air defence (GBAD) broadly includes things like barrage balloons, camouflage and jammers, most ‘active’ GBAD systems aim to destroy aerial targets through the use of either missiles or shells.

S-400

Ground-Based Air Defen