First Arrow Intercept

Things surrounding Israel just escalated to a new level today.  Houthis in Yemen launch a Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) requiring the FIRST OPERATIONAL USAGE of the Israeli Arrow 3 interceptor system.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it intercepted a surface-to-surface long-range ballistic missile and two cruise missiles that were fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

It was Israel's first-ever operational use of the Arrow system for intercepting ballistic missiles since the war began.

The MRBM missle may have been a version of the Burkan-3, which has an approximate payload capacity of 250kg.  Based on the chart below, a reasonable guess for damage radius might be about 0.5km, assuming an inverse-cubic decrease in damage radius proportional to a linear decrease in payload mass.  The downtown area of Tel-Aviv has an approximate radius of 2km, so a direct hit in the center of Tel-Aviv by a Burkan-3 missile would have caused unthinkable devastation.  Whether or not the Iran-backed Houthis assumed it would actually hit anything, a new red line has just been crossed in the level of warfare they are willing to risk.

Israel felt compelled for the first time to utilize their supply of Arrow interceptors, reserved for the most grave threats to national existence.  This is equivalent to the United States activating Patriot interceptors, which are reserved as a deterrent against Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) threats.

If this is Iran testing Israeli missile defenses by proxy, then successful intercept demonstrations like this may cause Iran to give up on missile attacks and attempt to draw in a Russian and Turkish air assault on Israel; the Magog Invasion of Ezekiel 38 & 39.