“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening from one of our historical cities of the world, Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. We are just outside the walls between the Jaffa Gate and New Gate on the Mamilla And what better way to look at defenses than this historic fortress that’s been around for thousands of years, to look and understand how important the defense of your population is. I’m Riki Ellison, I’m founder and chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, founded in 2002. And we believe, and we’re seeing it in the world today, that missile defense stabilizes, missile defense defends, and missile defense protects lives. And the lack of missile defense is the opposite. We have a discussion today, and I think, we are in one of the greatest countries in the world with a layered missile defense system that is deployed and operational, that not only deters, but saves lives on a daily basis. It’s a system that was put in place rapidly and put in place very smartly, that is very, very effective. Israel has partnered with the United States in developing the majority of its systems, the Arrow, the Arrow 3, David’s Sling, and the new, upcoming Arrow 4. The United States is also co-producing those weapons systems along with Iron Dome. The United States gives, in this partnership of development, is supporting with about 500 million a year. The next 10 years is the contract that we have with Israel to co-develop and co-produce these capabilities. We had a chance, or I had a chance today, to visit the Iron Dome site south of Tel Aviv. That was absolutely spectacular to see, a young female commander, that was part of one of the most prolific missile fights or rocket fights that Israel’s ever had. And that was last May 2021, for 10 days, where they sustained 700 missiles in one day, and over 4,000 missiles and rockets sent into their population. A remarkable feat with their four batteries of the Iron Dome, to have no civilian deaths from that attack, and 1600 intercepts with a 90% effective rate. That is spectacular to understand, to see how that system went and operated, and it still is operating today. So there is a lot for the world to learn from Israel, a lot to see how they did it, what they did. Each of countries, especially NATO, need to look at this as an example of how to do it right.”
Riki Ellison, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
“So in Iran, I think the most important issue is precision. They are now giving precise attack capabilities, even to small-caliber rockets, which were a statistical weapon until recent times. But now, they are producing and exporting accuracy kits for other proxies in the region. It could be in Lebanon, it could be in Iraq, and on our southern border with the Gaza strip. So precision, you can see it all the way from the drones through rockets that now are almost missiles, and of course, ballistic missiles with greater and greater accuracy, and also more locality, if you are speaking about the warheads. Another issue from Iran is the increasing speed of the reentry vehicles that we can see, and they are describing at least some of their rockets and missiles in their arsenals as hypersonic rockets … no, sorry, not rockets, hypersonic missiles, with a huge speed when they are entering the earth’s atmosphere. So this is another challenge for any missile defense in the world. Even though it’s not a pure hypersonic weapon like we can see in China, operational in Russia, perhaps operational in what the United States is now planning to do. But it is important to understand that in Iranian view, speed, a large quantity of missiles attacks from various directions, and accuracy, is the solution for any missile defense system. And they are learning from their experience in the past.”
Tal Inbar, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
I think, in the last few years, we saw a lot of bells ring all over the world, from the Pakistani and Indian conflict to the conflict that we have between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The conflict is now between Iran and Russia. That’s a good time to remind us that we need to cooperate, to train together, to work together. I believe maybe it’s a good time to create what I called CMEA. C for Central, ME for the Middle East, A for Alliance. A few countries here in the Middle East, countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates, should start thinking seriously to cooperate in an alliance, in order to maintain and combine the difference. They face the challenge of the Iranians in the region.
Brig Gen (Ret) Shachar Shohat, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
We all know the Iranian regime, they have thousands of long-range rockets, cruises missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, and my point here is any nation in the Middle East, specifically Israel, you’re outgunned, so to speak. So again, something to pay close attention to, and again, it goes back to those four pillars. So that’s the first point I wanted to make. Second point, Riki, as you alluded to, and again, what my two predecessors mentioned, is that layered air and missile defense within the state of Israel. So they’ve got from counter-UAS capability all the way up to the arrow capability, and then, of course, in between, you’ve got the Iron Dome, you’ve got Patriot, you’ve got David’s Sling, and that’s just within the state of Israel’s defense network. And, of course, while you have all those kinetic capabilities, you can’t leave out the sensor network and what that architecture looks like and the integration of that architecture in order to make timely decisions at the right echelon. And a great case study here is the state of Israel, and who’s got a greater layered air and missile defense in the world?
COL (Ret) David Shank, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
Hey look, this is an important discussion. Iranian ballistic missile capability has been a general upswing. Every once in a while they have an accident, somehow. Somebody gets killed or something blows up. But generally speaking, they’ve been on a significant upward trend, and it’s between linear and exponential. What that means is they’re introducing a lot of risk for all of us. And therefore, we need to make the investments to reduce that risk and make sure that our troops and our allied partner troops are well protected.
Militarily, there’s also a lot we can do. We should discourage the Gulf Cooperation Council states from purchasing any air and missile defenses from our near-peer competitors. I think that’s risky for integration later on. We can work towards developing a regional missile defense architecture that benefits the US and all its partners. We can continue the appropriate arms sales to those GCC partners and, obviously, Israel, and we can try to increase US-GCC and US-Israel military exercises, maybe even with all of us in there. This has happened in a very limited way like, say, during Iron Union. We can help GCC states in Israel cooperate together to the degree that it’s US technology. And then looking at our own stuff, we can harden our bases better. We can protect our personnel by actually building the next-generation Indirect Fire Protection Capability or IFPIC. We can continue developing our GPS jamming capabilities. We could support space-based warning. We could develop Left of Launch. There are a lot of opportunities out there for the United States. And then we could even go into the kind of economic road and continue, like I said global missile sanctions, and even kind of explore expanded sectoral sanctions against Iran and specific sectors, including sanctions on metals that are critical to the missile program. And we can continue to sanction and expose Iran’s procurement and proliferation networks, which don’t just support themselves but support the terrorist groups that they sponsor. And we can encourage our partners to do the same in sanctioning Iran’s missile program. So there is really a lot to do diplomatically, intelligence-wise, militarily, and economically to get at this, but we definitely have to get at it.
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
Well, I think that Ukraine’s situation has put a spotlight on the world’s best-defended nation, and that is a catalyst for Israel to be able to duplicate what they’ve done. And I think it’s even bigger in that movement for the GCC, as a collective group, where they’re going to do historic pioneering to bring together a group of countries that you would never think could come together under a missile defense concept. Iran’s driving this through its threat, it’s driving a bigger defended region that’s creating trust in relationships, but we have to also know how great our relationship and how great the interoperability is, and that doesn’t come all overnight. That takes years a little bit to create that. So that movement, I think, is upon us.
Riki Ellison, “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”, March 9, 2022
On March 9, 2022, the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance hosted its historic 40th Virtual Congressional Roundtable in Jerusalem, Israel, MDAA’s first virtual held internationally, on “Missile Defense and Authoritarian Adversaries: The Challenge From Iran”.
Click here to watch the complete roundtable
Click here for a printable version of the transcript
Speakers
Mr. Tal Inbar
Research Fellow
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Brigadier General (Ret) Shachar Shohat
Commander of the Israel Air Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
Colonel (Ret) David Shank
Former Commander
10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command
RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery
Former Deputy Director for Plans, Policy and Strategy
USEUCOM
Mr. Riki Ellison
Chairman and Founder
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
