Join the Alliance

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Successful David’s Sling Missile Intercept Paves Way for Deployment in Israel

April 1, 2015

Tel Aviv – April 1, 2015 — Today, Israel successfully tested and validated their new “David’s Sling” Air and Missile Defense system against a challenging realistic target missile in the upper atmosphere. David’s Sling is designed to intercept short and medium range theatre ballistic missiles (TBMs) from non-separating SCUD-B and SCUD-Cs to separating SCUD-Ds,  as well as long-range maneuverable rockets and cruise missiles.

David’s Sling, with its unique dolphin-shaped maneuverable nose can travel over Mach 15, changing direction to seek out its target in the atmosphere providing a hit to kill kinetic metal on metal intercept within centimeters against reentry warheads from ballistic missiles and much slower cruise missiles. The interceptor is called Stunner, an impressive capability that will fill the wide gap for Israel between the current Iron Dome’s short-range rocket defense and the Arrow 2’s lower space interceptors. This new third layer of defense provides Israel with three (Iron Dome, David Sling, Arrow 2) out of four needed layers with its own indigenous missile defense systems. The fourth layer – the long shots from midcourse to low space is currently being handled by U.S. Aegis BMD ships in the Mediterranean Sea. The layer that David’s Sling will be replacing is the much older U.S. Patriot PAC-2 interceptor systems operated by Israel.

This was the second test of a current series of three tests that achieved intercept at the top end of its capability against a most likely target representation of a SCUD B target ballistic missile.  One more success in this test series upcoming soon will assure the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the Missile Defense Agency a positive upcoming production decision that will lead to a deployment of this system throughout Israel. This deployment of the first operational unit could come as early as the end of this year and would enable Israel to face current longer-range and evolving rocket and missile threats from within Syria, Lebanon and Iran with a system of its own.

Read MDAA’s full report on Israeli BMD, “Taking on Goliath”

Read the Missile Defense Agency’s Press Release from yesterday’s David Sling Test.  

Read MDAA recent report on Iranian missiles threatening Israel.

Recent Alerts

Mission Statement

MDAA’s mission is to make the world safer by advocating for the development and deployment of missile defense systems to defend the United States, its armed forces and its allies against missile threats.

MDAA is the only organization in existence whose primary mission is to educate the American public about missile defense issues and to recruit, organize, and mobilize proponents to advocate for the critical need of missile defense. We are a non-partisan membership-based and membership-funded organization that does not advocate on behalf of any specific system, technology, architecture or entity.

How You Can Help

International Cooperation