A Houthi missile landed in Israel from Yemen for the first time on Sunday, breaking through the air after Israel launched air defenses. Although the attack failed to cause serious casualties or damage, it shows the serious threat the Houthi rebels can pose and perhaps gives their Iranian backers a clue about Israel’s missile defenses.
“I believe that Iran will take the attack seriously, but it still shows the limited capability of the missiles produced by Iran to threaten Israel,” Sim Tack, a military and political analyst, told Business Insider.
The Israeli military confirmed Tuesday that it had launched several Houthi interceptor missiles on Sunday morning. These include the Arrow 2, part of Israel’s advanced multi-layered air defense system.
“It is already known that at least one Arrow missile managed to hit but destroyed the incoming missile, but this was still enough to prevent the missile from reaching its intended destination,” said Tack. “On Israel’s side, the attack may raise more concerns about how to deal with these constant threats and the possibility of large-scale missiles falling on Israeli soil if it happens not it was completely unsuccessful.”
The Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 both made their first rounds of combat against Houthis missiles on October 31 and November 9, 2023 respectively. The Arrow 3 fires an interceptor missile that hits a missile that enters Earth’s atmosphere, and boasts a higher speed than its predecessor, the Arrow 2. It is also a lethal strike missile, while the Arrow 2 destroys targets coming bursting closer.
The Israeli military, which said it would investigate why the Arrow failed to destroy the incoming threat on Sunday, also disputed the Houthis’ dubious claim that the missile was hypersonic – the group even painted the word “hypersonic” in English to it.
The missile that the Houthis fired at Israel on Sunday appears to be an Iranian-made solid fuel weapon. Handout/Houthi Media Center via Getty Images
Hypersonic missiles are a class of advanced weapons that can travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 to evade interceptor missiles; there is no evidence that the Houthi missile is in class beyond its paint job.
The Houthis have named the missile Palestine 2, which analysts believe may be a “hybrid” of the short-range Iranian Fateh-110 and Kheibar Shekan medium-range missiles. The group has previously done promotions for Fateh-110 and Kheibar Shaken.
The first Palestinian missile, identical to the one used in Sunday’s attack, was unveiled in June, and the Houthis said it was used in an attack against the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. The Palestinian missiles are robust, making them more advanced than the surface-to-air missiles used by the group so far.
“I think the Houthis always hope that their missiles can penetrate Israel’s air and missile defenses, but this missile was not very different from the previous models that were produced by Israel,” said Tack. “So it would appear that this was a repeated attempt, and indeed a source of false claims regardless of the outcome of such attacks.”
Sunday’s missile traveled in a straight line, traveling about 1,200 kilometers from Yemen and reaching Israeli airspace in less than 12 minutes. In July, the Houthis managed to hit Tel Aviv with Samad’s long drone first, killing one. The drone flew an indirect and unpredictable 16-hour route of 1,600 kilometers, approaching Israel from the west and catching its air defenses off guard.
“At least for now, it seems likely that an isolated attack – a single missile – might not be seen as a threat by Israel’s air defense network to trigger a response. stable,” Ryan Bohl, senior Middle East major. A North African analyst at risk intelligence company RANE, told BI.
Bohl said: “Israel claims that it captured the missiles, so I don’t think anyone can automatically conclude that it has deviated. “Instead, its geographical distance from Yemen is perhaps the most prominent, as it shows that Yemen is an effective conduit for long-term attacks by Iran and its allies and proxies.”
Most of the Houthi missiles and drones are based on Iranian designs. Iran launched a direct attack on Israel for the first time in April 2024, launching massive missiles and a massive drone strike in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Iranian officials in Syria. Iran launched an unprecedented attack, and Israel, with help from its allies, managed to intercept most of the incoming bombs. The few Iranian Emad missiles that hit their target, a major air base in southern Israel, also turned out to be much weaker than previously thought.
“When it comes to large-scale drone and missile attacks, Iran has to rely on large numbers to try to overwhelm Israel’s air and missile defenses,” Tack said.
“If Tehran achieves a surprise performance in such a large-scale attack, it is possible that even more missiles could penetrate Israel’s defenses, but recent attacks do not affect that thinking or knowledge,” Tack added.
Unless the Houthis can fire advanced missiles simultaneously, it is unlikely they will achieve anything more than “occasional strikes” against their distant enemy, Tack said. .
“For the Houthis, the attack – successful or unsuccessful – is a political success that serves their domestic goals. It will drive recruitment and allow them to use this as propaganda,” said Bohl. “They certainly learned that Israel’s air defenses are strong, but they probably didn’t get more from that incident than they already knew from the April 2024 incident with Iran.”
For Israel, the RANE tester has shown that using other, cheaper methods than Arrow 3 makes sense for attacks with one or less arrows. By doing so, Israel can reserve the Arrow 3 for countering larger, more complex, and more technologically advanced attacks.
In addition to the Arrow and the short-range Iron Dome, Israel uses the David Sling system, which covers the central part of the air defense. It decided to begin retiring its older, American-made Patriot PAC-2 systems earlier this year.
Because of their geographical proximity to Israel, the Houthis are unlikely to be a priority over other Iranian-backed fighters in the current conflict, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has a large stockpile of missiles. from above.
“The Houthis are increasingly a threat against Israel, and if there is a steady supply of such missiles from Iran, they can compete with Hezbollah in terms of the threat of large-scale attacks,” Bohl said.
“But that requires a sustainable building that I think is still a long way off,” Bohl added. “Currently, Iran, followed by Hezbollah, are direct threats to Israel with rockets and missiles.”
Steven Horrell, senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, believes that Sunday’s attack was a “great comparison of the general situation” in Iran and Israel.
“For Iran, the Houthi proxies and others are still a cheap and ineffective way to undermine the rules-based international order and punish Israel,” Horrell told BI.
“For Israel, there is a high level of confidence in the defense of many missiles – but this is a reminder that it is not perfect; the risk has not been reduced to zero,” Horrell said.
While the US Navy has captured a number of Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea, one CEPA official argued that these measures are like “shooting with arrows and not smoking”.