"I didn't believe they would dare": The Iranian surprise – and the secret of the Arrow that defeated it
Boaz Levy, former head of the Arrow program, describes in an interview with Maariv the night the system intercepted over 100 Iranian ballistic missiles. Levy says he was surprised by the scale of the attack, but the system was designed to handle large quantities. He notes that the interception rate exceeded 90 percent, and defines the Arrow as the best interceptor missile in the world, thanks to Israeli algorithms and the operational experience of the engineers.
In a special interview with the Maariv podcast, Boaz Levy, former head of the Arrow program and system engineer, returns to the night the air defense system faced its greatest test against Iran. According to him, he estimated the attack would be much smaller, with only a few dozen missiles, and did not believe Iran would reach quantities of over 100 ballistic missiles. Levy says the system was designed from the start to handle large quantities in short time frames, and as he sat in the command rooms facing the screen, the feeling was like a science fiction movie – detection, interception, impact, and repeat. He notes that the interception rate exceeded 90 percent, a result even the developers did not expect. Levy defines the Arrow as the best interceptor missile in the world, thanks to the combination of its small, agile physical structure and the sophisticated algorithms developed in Israel by engineers with operational experience. He also addresses the development of future generations – Arrow 4 and Arrow 5 – which will complement Arrow 3 and provide multi-layered defense. Levy refers to the hypersonic threat and maneuvering missiles, and says the defense establishment already has solutions for these threats, and the race is always to stay ahead of the threat. He emphasizes that there will never be enough interceptors, and the cost of the system cannot be examined in isolation from the potential damage it prevents.