The advanced Iron Beam laser interception system known as Magen Or has been tested and has already proven several times its ability to intercept rockets and short-range aerial threats. As a result, the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D)and the Ministry of Defense decided that the system has reached technological maturity and proven operational capability, which justify its deployment nationwide as a complement and reinforcement to the Iron Dome batteries.
But in order to move from the stage of operational experiments and tests, which are carried out using individual Magen Or systems, to the stage of the wide operational deployment of dozens of such systems, the Ministry of Defense, the U.S government and the defense industries need to invest billions in establishing production lines for this advanced and very complicated laser interception system, which currently is the only unit of its kind in the world.
There are other laser interception systems that are in trial stages, mainly in the United States, but there is not yet a single ground interception system whose performance is equivalent to that of Magen Or. Therefore, the decision of the Ministry of Defense to invest two billion shekels in the Israeli system expresses confidence in the performance of the blue-and-white system, and is historic because Israel is the first to put such an innovative and ground-breaking interception system into operational service.
This is very similar to the global breakthrough made by Israel's defense establishment and industries regarding UAVs for intelligence and operational use, and it is a historic event also because it is quite likely to assume that, over time, improvements will be made to the system and more advanced models will be built, the performance of which will exceed the performance of the original system by hundreds of percent, as happened with Iron Dome and the Arrow systems. And this may be the basis for profitable defense exports for years to come.
The ground-based laser system "Magen Or" is not a "death-ray-destroys-everything" kind of system. Its effectiveness is very limited in difficult weather and under poor visibility conditions and currently it is able to intercept threats only at relatively short ranges. Therefore, its main virtue is the very cheap price (a few tens of shekels) of each laser interception compared to about $50,000, which is the average price of an Iron Dome interceptor, and the ability to deal quickly in favorable weather conditions with a large number of threats.
Iron Dome intercepts rockets over the Haifa Bay area
(Video: Udi Boch)
It will take at least a year until the industries can move to serial production of Magen Or systems and until they are deployed and begin to have a significant impact on the battlefield.
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