A new, high-altitude interceptor in development by Israel and the U.S. prioritizes an affordable unit cost to achieve a requirement to defend against high-volume attacks by medium- and intermediate-range missiles, a top Israeli military official said May 30. 

The configuration of the future Arrow-4 missile interceptor was frozen after a two-year requirements study by the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said Moshe Patel, IMDO’s director. 

“We came to the conclusion that we need to produce and have a high volume of this layer—the endoatmospheric layer,” Patel said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

“The new interceptor will be—and I’m careful to say—a little bit more affordable compared to Arrow 2 and Arrow 3,” Patel said. 

Israel started developing the Arrow-2 endoatmospheric interceptor in the 1990s to counter threats from Iraq’s family of Scud ballistic missiles. A decade later, Israel and the U.S. collaborated to develop the Arrow-3 as an exoatmospheric layer, with the goal of shooting down nuclear missiles launched by Iran before they can re-enter the atmosphere over Israel. 

Israel had previously confirmed the Arrow-4 would replace the endoatmospheric Arrow-2, but Patel’s comments are the first to confirm that the new interceptor is being designed for affordable, high-volume production. 

Despite the low-cost goal, the Arrow-4 still will feature advanced technologies, including those adapted from the exoatmospheric Arrow-3, Patel said.

The new interceptor details come as U.S. budget documents hint at a small schedule delay. The Arrow-4 was scheduled to complete a critical design review in 2022. But MDA published new budget justification documents in March that show the review has been rescheduled to this year. A planned first test flight of the Arrow-4 in 2024, meanwhile, has disappeared from MDA’s latest budget proposal. 

In addition to development of the Arrow-4 interceptor, MDA’s documents also show that Israel is planning to field a new missile defense radar. To augment or replace the existing Green Pine radar, Israel also is developing the new Pine Woods radar system alongside Arrow-4, MDA’s budget documents say.