TEL AVIV, Israel\u00a0\u2014\u00a0In the aftermath of Israel’s early Friday morning airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Syria, the country’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile scored its first operational intercept\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but against what, experts here are asking?
Today\u2019s statement made no mention of retaliatory strikes, and an IDF officer confirmed to Defense News that airstrikes were against “strategic assets of Hezbollah” far north of the Israel-Syria-Jordan border. Israeli media reported Friday morning that the strikes were aimed at arms convoys in Syria\u2019s Homs District, not far from Palmyra, a formerly Islamic State group-held city retaken earlier this month by Syrian regime forces with backing from Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli media are reporting that the Arrow intercepted an SA-5 surface-to-air missile, or SAM, and indeed it is logical that Syria\u2019s air defense system launched against the intruding Israeli fighters in an attempt to down the planes. But given that the Israeli attack was hundreds of kilometers away from Israeli territory, why would Israel launch Arrow, which is intended to defend the homeland? The SA-15 or any other Syrian or even Russian SAM would not have posed a threat within Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in any case, Arrow is not designed to intercept SAMs. Such anti-air missiles are not part of the system\u2019s database, which automatically tracks trajectories and predicts impact points of incoming ballistic missiles. Once fired, an SA-5 with its four strap-on boosters create five targets in the air, all of which appear as tumbling objects whose trajectories\u00a0\u2014\u00a0unlike those of ballistic missiles\u00a0\u2014\u00a0are practically impossible to predict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And even if the Arrow system\u2019s early warning and tracking radar mistook fragments of the SAM as a ballistic target, where is the debris, experts here are asking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A more likely scenario, several experts here said, is that the Syrian regime was so incensed by yet another successful Israeli air attack on its soil that it fired off a Scud-type ballistic missile to make a point. Perhaps their point was to warn Israel against future incursions into its territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or, in light of last week\u2019s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at coordinating strategic interests and actions in Syria, perhaps Damascus felt the need to protest too much clarity between its Russian patron and its Israeli enemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n