Israel’s multilayered, sophisticated missile-defense system is renowned for protecting its citizens. But the possibility of a new war involving Iran puts a heightened focus on Israel’s stock of ballistic-missile interceptors, which was significantly depleted in 2025.
The same goes for the U.S. arsenal of land- and sea-based antiballistic missiles, which provided a vital additional shield for Israel during the 12-day war with Iran last June.
That leaves a bracing math problem looming as the Middle East edges closer to conflict: Should missiles start flying again, can Israeli and U.S. forces hunt down enemy launchers quickly enough, and destroy enough missiles on the ground, before their own air defenses run out of interceptors?
“I’ve heard the generals and journalists and ministers saying, ‘No, we are good,’” said Ran Kochav, a former commander of Israel’s air and missile defense forces, referring to wall-to-wall optimistic commentary on Israeli television recently. “It’s a false reassurance.”
What he circumspectly called Israel’s “inventory issues” can cost Israel in “casualties and problems over the whole country,” Mr. Kochav added. “There is no automatic safe place.”
While the Iron Dome system is perhaps the best-known component of Israel’s air defense, it is designed to stop the kind of short-range rockets fired by Hamas. Other systems are more applicable in a conflict with Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The David’s Sling system intercepts medium- to long-range missiles that do not reach very high altitudes. The Arrow 3 system, jointly developed by Boeing and Israel Aerospace Industries, is deployed against long-range ballistic missiles at altitudes above Earth’s atmosphere.
The United States helped defend Israel during the conflict with Iran in June with two batteries of land-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, systems and with several Aegis destroyers whose armaments include SM-3 antiballistic missiles.
The two allies’ air defenses worked side by side and seamlessly, by all accounts, with impressive results. Of 574 ballistic missiles launched by Iran, only 49 struck meaningful targets, according to a report on the June 2025 conflict by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA, a Washington research organization. Some Iranian missiles failed or struck open areas.
Israel and the United States tried to stop 322 Iranian missiles and successfully intercepted 273, an 85 percent success rate.
But the 100 to 250 THAAD interceptors launched by the United States constituted 20 percent to 50 percent of the Pentagon’s entire inventory, and the 80 SM-3 missiles used constituted nearly a fifth of the military’s stockpile at the end of 2025, according to a December report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“That was an impressive defensive effort, but it also showed our base-line stockpiles were way too low,” said Ari Cicurel, author of the JINSA report.
The Pentagon moved in January to quadruple the yearly production of THAAD interceptors to 400 from 96. But the manufacture rates for Arrow 3 and SM-3 interceptors made in the United States are painfully slow, experts say, around 24 a year for each.
Israel’s Arrow 3 inventory and rate of production are more closely guarded.
Still, Tal Inbar, an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said, “I tell my friends, if they like to be worried, I won’t spoil the feeling.”.
As Israel waits to see what President Trump will do, its military is seeking to reassure the public that it will be well protected, either by missile defenses or the country’s many bomb shelters. In the war last June, few people who went to bomb shelters were harmed. In one case, a high-rise building was devastated except for the hardened safe rooms on each floor.
“Whether we have enough interceptors or not,” said Capt. Adi Stoler, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military, “there’s one thing that will keep them safe for sure, and that’s the shelters.”
In a new conflict, the pressure will be on U.S. and Israeli forces to repeat Israel’s success from 2025, when its air force destroyed much of Iran’s long-range weaponry on the ground early in the fight.
“If we’re going to see air supremacy like we saw in June, then the life expectancy of any launcher in the wild is going to be very short,” Mr. Inbar said.
Captain Stoler cited what she said was an old military saying: “In a war, you must hit the archer and not the arrows.”
Iran adapted as the June 2025 conflict went on, launching missiles from farther to the east and finding holes in Israel’s defenses by firing smaller salvos more frequently and at all hours of the day and night, exhausting and frightening the population and testing its resiliency.
Iran also appeared to shift its sights, with missiles striking some population centers like Beersheva repeatedly, according to the JINSA report. That prompted Israel to use even more interceptors to protect its civilians.
“Several missiles per day could inflict a lot of economic damage,” Mr. Inbar said. “Many people will be just afraid to go outside, and most workplaces won’t be open. This is a situation that I don’t want to see happen.”
David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.
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