Podcast: Shielding The Skies—Missile Defense In A Changing World

Aviation Week editors assess the recent performance of Israel’s air and missile defense umbrella and discuss new missile defense technology needed to address potential and evolving threats.

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Transcript

Brian Everstine:

Welcome to Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast. I am Brian Everstine, Aviation Week's Pentagon editor. I'm joined this week by Defense Editor, Steve Trimble and Tony Osborne, our European defense editor. Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel early April 14th could only be described as a massive success for Israel's layered air defense system, bolstered by significant help from American ships and combat aircraft, along with fighters from the U.K., Jordan and France. The salvo of more than 300 systems, largely low-speed, one-way attack UAVs, along with ballistic and cruise missiles, was almost completely defeated with just a couple missiles squeaking through and causing very limited damage.

While the successful defense highlights the impressive capability of modern air defenses, it also raises some new questions on the state of current defenses in upcoming developments, particularly in the areas of cost and capacity. Steve, you attended a conference organized by the US Missile Defense Agency that was coincidentally scheduled a few days after the Iranian attack. What are your big takeaways?

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, sure. Thanks. It was interesting. They scheduled this conference literally two days after... No, it was three days after the Iran attack on Israel on that Sunday morning in Israel. So it was a victory lap for the people that were there. This was something that they had been preparing for something of this scale, over a 100 ballistic missiles, over 30 cruise missiles, over a 170 one-way attack munitions, all coming at the same time from a certain general direction, and for the most part, completely thwarted through this multinational and multilayered defense system. And so there was natural pride in that accomplishment. But they were also, I think, aware that there were some caveats. General Heath Collins, the MDA director, alluded to that a little bit by saying it or acknowledging upfront, he said, "This one was a little different maybe over the weekend as far as foreshadowing and difficulty." And that's really a reference it seems to the fact that Israel had about a good week's worth of warning that something was coming.

Obviously it was a reprisal attack against an explosion at a building next to the Iranian Embassy in Syria that has been attributed to Israel. So they knew that something like this was coming. It was very specific intelligence that the US put out just a couple of days before the attack, so they knew it was coming. And Iran's arsenal of medium-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles is really considered to be a cut below state-of-the-art, the kinds of threats that we look at and see in China and Russia, for example, to some extent, obviously Shaheds are shared between Russia and Iran at the moment. But it's also not looked at, the conference wasn't just looking at that particular attack itself. But this whole series of events in the Middle East. And it's interesting, just in the past year and a half or so, we've seen probably the combat debuts of most of the US arsenal and Israeli arsenals of tactical missile defenses. There was a THAAD operational intercept, the first intercept of an operational THAAD 18 months ago I think it was.

And it's believed that SM-6 was used for the first time since October 7th and since the Houthi barrage on maritime shipping and the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean that the US navy has been using SM-6 during that conflict. And now this gave them opportunity to use SM-3, although they haven't acknowledged that they've done that. But if you look at the profiles and the fact that these were a medium-range ballistic missiles coming in, and there were intercepts from ships off the Eastern Mediterranean coast, it makes sense that it's SM-3, and of course Arrow 3, the long-range, upper-tier missile defense system, ballistic missile defense system that Israel developed in cooperation with the United States over the past 15 years. All of that came to a head at the same time and worked very well. But at the same time, it also raised some concerns that were talked about very seriously at this conference, about the fact that this kind of effort would be very difficult to sustain.

So Iran launched over a hundred ballistic missiles in one night. China has over 2,800 tactical theater-level ballistic missiles. So imagine basically that kind of effort sustained over four weeks, every day for four weeks. That's what China's arsenal is capable of. And if we were to face something like that in the Indo-Pacific, not only would we run out of money eventually, but we'd also run out of capacity long before China's arsenal was depleted. So they're trying to think of other ways of addressing that problem. Directed energy was mentioned quite a bit as this long-term hope for option in the future. There are some systems being fielded already. The Army has fielded 50 kilowatt systems for short range threats, and they're about to start fielding both the Army and the Navy, these new 300 kilowatt systems which have the capacity or capability to shoot down cruise missiles, even some short range ballistic missiles potentially at relevant ranges.

And the Air Force also has a ground-based system like that that's also coming along a little bit later. But there are some limitations to what you can do with directed energy. It gives you this unlimited magazine supply. There is a duty cycle limitation because you're going to have to wait for it to cool down at certain points. And there's a huge upfront cost. The kinds of higher energy lasers that they're talking about are not cheap. So they're looking at other concepts as well in the short term, things that they think can fill this capacity and cost imposition challenge posed by this sustained barrage attack. And one of those things could be picking up on lessons learned from what other countries are doing, particularly Ukraine. And I think, well, there's more to talk about there, but maybe Tony could pick up that discussion.

Brian Everstine:

One important data point I wanted to add on the cost imposition that we've talked about is just a couple of days ago, Carlos Del Toro, the Secretary of the Navy, highlighted the firing of SM-2s, SM-6s and SM-3s during a Senate hearing, and said that the Navy spent about a billion dollars on firing their interceptors over the past six months in defense of Israel and also across the Red Sea. But Tony, can you talk a bit about what Ukraine has developed to address their own problems with sustained bombardment and the scarcity of high-tech interceptors?

Tony Osborne:

Thanks, Brian. Thanks Steve. It is a good segue into Ukraine, which of course is experiencing similar attacks on every few weeks, every month, obviously on a much smaller scale where perhaps Russia is now having to use the missiles it's building in the previous few months and then using them and then probably waiting a few weeks before long-range aviation is able to restart those flights. So again, just as you're seeing with Iran versus Israel, a mix of those one-way attack drones, those Shaheds, many of which are now being produced by Russian industry cruise missiles, and then the odd Iskander or an anti-ship missile that's been converted and then fired from a Backfire, which of course we saw the downing of one of those in the last few days. But Ukraine has adopted that system of the cheapest shop first and keeping those really expensive interceptors as the last point of defense really.

So in the last few weeks we've been hearing about the approach that Ukraine's been taking. Apparently it's set up a network of thousands of acoustic sensors, microphones placed all over the country, and they're all linked. And that gives direction of the Shaheds, which have a distinct lawnmower sounding motor that can be easily identified and they know the direction and the root and heading of those systems. And those can be fairly easily engaged by low-cost gun systems. Even guys with a DshKs on the ground just taking a pot shot at them or the slightly more expensive Gepards that have been provided by Germany.

And then as the threats become more complex, then that's when those more expensive interceptors have been developed. And it's important really to remember that Ukraine doesn't not have that multi-billion dollar developed-over-decades air defense system that Israel has. I mean, Israel was preparing essentially for an attack like that from Iran for the last two decades. Ukraine has had two years to develop a system from a hodgepodge of Soviet-era systems and Western systems. And you've got everything from S300s, SAMP-Ts, Patriots down to French Crotales, the British Asraam coming off a converted aircraft launch pylon and things like NASAMs. And there's also the FrankenSAM, which I don't think we've actually yet seen in combat, which we believe is a sort of SA6 equipped with sea Sparrow hybrid.

So they haven't had the opportunity to develop this extensive system, and yet they are having significant success where they have the SAMs available to them, and where they have the munitions available to them. And Steve, I mean, what's your thoughts on how well Ukraine has done what it's managed to put together?

Steve Trimble:

The impressive and the most impressive thing is, well, those two things. One, flipping the architecture so that your cheapest shot is on the front line and your most expensive shot, you're reserving for the threats that leak through, versus the way the US and the Israel has set up their systems. It's the opposite. Your first shot is the most expensive system. But those shots are also the most long-range systems. And you do want to use those on the front lines, especially against ballistic missiles. Because one thing about the attack on Israel, as impressive as it was, with the Shaheds being shot down before they entered Israeli airspace, most of the ballistic missiles also being shot down before they were over Israeli territory and only perhaps three or fewer that actually got through that defenses to explode on what was to be their sort of target without causing much damage.

But even then, you have to remember that that system that Israel constructed was not to defend against a conventional attack. It was to defend against a nuclear attack. And even one of those missiles with a nuclear warhead or two of those missiles with a nuclear warhead would've produced a very dramatic and very different result for Israel. Obviously that was not in Iran's intention, nor do they have a nuclear capability at the moment. But I mean, that's the kind of stakes that we're dealing with when we're talking about these kinds of systems.

So there's that part of it, but also what Ukraine has done that is so impressive is the integration. All these systems that Tony was describing, different countries, different operational philosophies that guided their design. Somehow all being sort of clued together in a sensible way to be relatively effective, except for the shortages and the scarcities and the other things like that that Ukraine is dealing with right now. Hopefully not for too much longer, but those are the two things that really stick out from the Ukrainian experience to me.

Tony Osborne:

Just out of interest, how do we think Israel would've dealt with the Shahed threat had it not been for those fighters being able to operate over the likes of Jordan and possibly maybe even Saudi Arabia?

Steve Trimble:

Well, I mean the most important part about that kind of air missile defense is if you're shooting it down over essentially empty territory like that, it makes things a lot easier. For one thing, if you miss whatever you just shot at it with, isn't going to hit something that's populated over your own territory. And not only that, if you do hit it, there's going to be an explosion with a lot of debris that's only going to go in one direction, which is down. So all of those things made it a lot easier for Israel to escape any kind of damage. So that was very significant.

And you can't always count on that. And this was a very unique circumstance where you had this multinational force that had time to assemble, prepare, get the logistics right, have their Sidewinders and Micas and Pythons all ready to go on their fighters, their crews all prepared, most likely de-conflicted, and coordinated so that they weren't crossing into each, well, not least, you have other air defenses. You had Arrow 2s, Arrow 3s, Patriots, SM3s, maybe even SM6s also being fired into pretty similar airspace. And you had to make sure that your fighters weren't going to be mistaken for any of these active sensors on these interceptors. So all those things, I mean, very impressive when you think about it, but they did have a lot of time to figure all that out.

Tony Osborne:

It was quite interesting. The whole Iran attack on Israel prompted certainly in Europe some sort of questions as well. Why can't we protect the skies over Ukraine in the same way? And, of course, this scenario just simply does not exist. There was no third country in which our fighters could go over and operate. That is a contested area with significant area air defenses operating those areas that are Russian. So there was no way in any shape or form in which western fighters could perform the same sort of impact in Ukraine. So it was quite an interesting of debate that was occurring here in Europe literally just started.

Steve Trimble:

Yeah, I mean, for Israel too, one of the big lessons here is that missile defense, for one thing, yes, it can prevent these kinds of attacks from causing serious damage, especially when your opponent... Let's also make the point that Iran did not target populated centers in Israel. They didn't target Knesset in Tel Aviv. They didn't target Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem. They attacked relatively sparsely populated areas like around Nevatim Airbase, near Beersheba, and the Golan Heights, so that when the missiles that did get through and did cause damage, the chances of it actually hitting a lot of people were pretty slim. So that helped as well.

But you do get the sense that it shows you the importance of the fact that if you have this integrated air missile defense and you can stop an attack like this from happening, you have a chance of deterring attacks, you send a message that you can stop this from happening. So just don't throw away your entire missile arsenal like that on a shot like that. And it gives you options. It preserves your options for responses. If those missiles that were launched at Israel hit populated areas, or if the Shaheds had crossed over into Israeli airspace and got shot down anyway, but still exploded over a populated center and killed people, Israel's response may have looked a lot different than what we saw just a few days later. So those are other lessons from this experience.

Brian Everstine:

And Steve, to change gears a little bit, I wanted to go back to the MDA conference you had attended. Hypersonic Glide vehicles are a new threat operational today that so far have not been used in anger. So how is the MDA responding to that problem?

Steve Trimble:

Right, and it is probably important to differentiate when we're talking about hypersonic glide vehicles, because there have been maneuvering hypersonic missiles used in Ukraine between Kinzhal, the air launch ballistic missile, the Iskander, which is a surface launch ballistic missile with a maneuvering capability in the terminal phase, in the last few moments before in its terminal dive down towards the target. And also the Zirkon, the hypersonic cruise missile. But what we haven't seen fired in anger so far is a hypersonic glide vehicle of the kind that Russia has fielded with Avangard, with a nuclear warhead. So thankfully we haven't seen that. And what Chinese have fielded, which what us considers to be dual use, either nuclear or conventional warheads with a DF-17 and the DF-27 that we know of. And these pose very significant challenge for a defense system, especially one that has been designed for ballistic threat.

What they're able to do is glide at an elevation that makes it very difficult for ballistic missile early warning sensors or ground-based tracking radars to pick them up until really it's too late. It's also very difficult to design an interceptor that has the kind of energy you need to keep up with them to be able to shoot them down. So as of today, Missile Defense Agency says that they do have a limited capability to shoot down a hypersonic glide vehicle with the SM6 and a new version of it called the Sea-Based Terminal version, that it has in the terminal phase of flight, some ability to shoot down a hypersonic glide vehicle. They're not actually going to demonstrate that or prove it until a test scheduled in 2026. There is a test I think scheduled in 2025 against a simulated threat, but an actual hypersonic glide vehicle test with an SM6 Sea-Based Terminal or SBT isn't until 2026.

But even then, even if that proves that it can do it, which it was never designed for, still Missile Defense Agency are very clear about the fact that that's not really good enough. What they really want is to be able to go after these hypersonic glide vehicles when they're much more vulnerable and easier to shoot down in a way because they're less maneuverable and that's during their glide phase and deepen their glide phase. But that means you need a pretty long range missile that has a lot of maneuver capability at the beginning and at the very end of flight. Because these hypersonic glide vehicles, they can move, they can swerve. And so your interceptor, it can't just go to a single spot like we have with ballistic missile defense. It has to be able to keep up with wherever this thing goes.

And they're pretty far away now from doing that. And there was a hope in the Missile Defense Agency. Certainly put out some expectations last year in testimony and other places that they were going to accelerate development of a glide phase interceptor. They were also going to bring in Japan with another billion dollars, but somewhere along the way that didn't happen. The budget that they came out with for fiscal 2025 and that future years defense plan didn't provide nearly enough money for hypersonic defense. And it seems like they just didn't get what they were expecting to get from the administration for that particular capability. And so instead of accelerating the deployment of the glide phase interceptor, they've actually delayed it by a year. So instead of coming out 2034, they'll come out in 2035.

In the meantime, they're trying to do kind of what they did with SM-six for the terminal phase. They're trying to do that with an existing capability that they have now for the glide phase, presumably that means something probably tweaking SM-3, Block 2A or THAAD doing something with that to give it some kind of capability like the SM-6 SBT may have for hypersonic glide vehicles in the terminal phase and do that in the glide phase. But we'll see how that goes. The thread is out there now. It does exist, and so they're hoping to get that at least interim capability ready and deployed by the end of the decade while they continue working on this ultimate interceptor solution with glide phase interceptor. Meanwhile, there are some other efforts DARPA still has, Glidebreaker. Boeing is working on that, which is working on a new diverting attitude control system that's far more advanced to deal with that cross range maneuver capability of a hypersonic glide vehicle. So that is progressing as well.

Brian Everstine:

And Tony, within the past couple of years have been a series of new air defense initiatives across the Europe. Can you give us the latest on what's happening there?

Tony Osborne:

Yeah, no, it's a good point. When you listen to what Steve was just saying about the MDA and the hypersonics, you just realized how far America has advanced it in these areas and how much money it has to spend in those areas. But even that, obviously that funding is not finite because obviously there were limitations in terms of where America's going in terms of hypersonic defense. In Europe, I think in the last two years, I think I've written more on ground-based air defense than actual aircraft programs. That's what it feels like. I mean, you've got a list as almost as long as your arm in terms of European Skyshield initiative. You've got the initiatives coming out of the European Defense Fund. Programs like Twister and their associated high-def and high-dis interceptor programs between the two factions of Europe's missile industry. And then of course you've got Poland, which is going to have them probably one of the most capable layered air defense systems probably anywhere in the world apart from Russia.

When you think of the programs like Wisla with Patriot, Narev with the MBDA, CAMM, and also the Pilica programs for short range, these are significant investments. It's fair to say that Europe really hasn't invested in air defense since the end of the Cold War until now, and in fact, probably not really developed. They're not really invested in it since the seventies. I mean, there was once a time, if you look back at the sixties and seventies, there would've been a line of air defense systems sort of fixed sites with systems like Bloodhound in the UK or Nike Hercules and Hawks in Germany facing towards the east. That's all gone. It's all mobile systems and not many of them. And now we're seeing that sort of massive recapitalization. Even small nations like the Baltic States are investing in medium-based air defenses. Countries like Slovenia are going down this route. They had nothing previously apart from a few man pads.

Now there's this significant effort all across Europe. And the SSI is one of those initiatives that's trying to enable the economies of scale for multiple countries to pool and share resources, to try and buy big lots of these systems and then spread the costs out. So for example, ESSI initiative is to produce a thousand Patriot Pactu missiles in Europe through an initiative for a company called ComLog, which is an NBDA-Rafian joint venture. So yeah, there is an inordinate amount of work to improve European air defenses, and I think that's only going to continue as they see what's going on in Ukraine. Several leaders have called for an Iron dome-like system. That's not going to happen. Europe's a much bigger area than Israel. We're not defending against those Katyusha-style rockets that are fired by Hezbollah and Hamas. This is all about proper ballistic missile defense in Europe, and I think there's going to be an awful lot of effort and an awful lot more of that to come. Just look at what Germany is buying with Arrow-3. This is going to be a constant evolution in coming years.

Brian Everstine:

For the both of you, what are the new threats facing air and missile defense batteries such as anti-irradiation missiles, and perhaps less traditional means?

Steve Trimble:

Right. Well, the best defense is sometimes the best offense. And so that's part of this too. We haven't seen a whole lot of new developments on the threat side of that. Russia's still got KH31P, which is a Soviet era type anti-irradiation missile. It's been updated a bit over time. China's version of that, a pretty close version of it is the YJ-91, which is fielded on their Su-30 MKKs and their JH-7A's. And so that's what they use to try to take out or suppress the radars that would guide these air and missile defense systems trying to shoot down these aircraft. They also have AWACS killers R37M, and the Chinese version of that as well. So those are out there as well too. Whereas I know on the US side, there's been a lot of investment in that lately to go beyond where we've been since the Vietnam era really, or 1970s with AGM-88 HARM.

And more recently the AGM-88E AARGM, which is essentially HARM with a GPS guidance system to allow the missile to continue going towards the target. Even if the emitting or the emitter array turns itself off, it can still find the target. So the Navy's investing in AARGM-ER, which sounds very similar to AARGM, but is a very different missile, much more longer range, much faster and looks a lot different as well. The Air Force is adapting that with a new warhead and a new guidance system for their F35s. So that's called the Stand And Attack weapon. And that'll be the first time. I mean the Air Force has been calling the F35 their premier suppression of enemy air defense platform, even though it didn't actually have an anti-radiation missile like HARM. SIA will eventually give them that.

Now, both of those weapons, ARGUM-ER and SAW are supposed to be... SAW is Stand And Attack weapon, are supposed to be fielded on the Block 4F35s, so now we're just waiting for the TR3, the Technical Refresh-three upgrade for the F35s to get certified, which is supposed to happen by the end of September, now over a year late, so that Lockheed can resume deliveries of Block Fours. Although we're still not sure if that AARGM-ER and SAW integrated capability will be completed yet at that time or if it'll be coming later. So that's all part of this. The offensive strike part of it is an important part of that whole topic.

Tony Osborne:

I'd say in Europe, and this will sound very familiar, but it's another area that's gone under-invested in recent years. Blame conflicts in Afghanistan, Balkans and so on. Although actually the Balkans actually saw quite a lot of activity in that area. So France plans to reconstitute a SEAD-DEAD capability before the end of the decade on the Rafale. The Netherlands is introducing or plans to introduce AARGM onto its F35 and Germany will develop a SEAD-DEAD capability for the typhoon. It's already working with SAW to put on a emitter locator system onto the typhoon and to also put AARGM onto that aircraft. So there is efforts underway into an area that is literally just been ignored for years as aircraft have literally been sort of circling above the desert and dropping bombs from a high altitude. Now they're really so to rethink that SEAD-DEAD capability. And there are efforts underway. But that's going to take some time. And until then, we will still be reliant on Tornado ECRs and F16 CJs from US Air Forces and Europe, and of course, the limited capabilities of the F35, at least for now.

Brian Everstine:

Well, that's a wrap for this week's Check 6 podcast. Thank you to our producer in London, Guy Ferneyhough. Don't miss the next episode by following Check 6 in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Bye for now.