The Israeli Air Force has on its web platform that it had intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) fired “from the Red Sea region”. This was the first operational interception by the Israeli Arrow III long-range missile defense system.

The system was already put into operation in Israel in January 2017 and is is also planned for Germany from 2025. It was developed jointly by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Boeing (in Germany, IAI is partnering with MBDA for its introduction) and is primarily intended to defend against ballistic missile threats, especially those flying at very high altitudes and extremely high speeds.

Yemen’s Houthis fire north
The intercepted but unnamed missile was apparently launched by the forces of the Houthi militia supported by Iran – itself a producer of a large number of surface-to-surface missiles – in Yemen, a good 1,600 kilometers to the south. Their “entry into the war” was confirmed by their military spokesman, Brigadier General Bin Amer, to the Al-Mayadeen channel and in a statement broadcast on television there. statement broadcast on television there. The attacks would continue “until the Israeli aggression stops”, clearly referring to the Israeli counter-attack against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. A “large number of drones and ballistic missiles have been fired towards Israel”, the operation was already the third directed against Israel and there will be more. https://militaeraktuell.at/auslandseinsaetze-des-bundesheeres-verlaengert/

@Times of Israel
This is supposed to be a picture of the Arrow III interception success.

The US Navy also intercepts missiles
Missiles were also fired from the US Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Carney (DDG 64) during the first two operations in the previous week. The US Department of Defense confirmed a corresponding CNN report. The ship, which was cruising in the Red Sea, used Standard Missile 2 (SM-2) interceptor missiles to shoot down three missiles and several drones launched from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen. Similarly, on 19 October, four cruise missiles and almost 20 drones were neutralized in a nine-hour phase and also by DDG64 – which is part of the carrier battle group cruising in the eastern Mediterranean around the new US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford CVN-78. As Brigadier General Pat Ryder explained, these were “successful demonstrations” of the integrated air and missile defense architecture that the US has built up in the Middle East and is ready to deploy to protect its interests and partners.

@Archive
A look at the Iranian arsenal of Quds cruise missiles – also used by the Houthis.

The Arrow, now launched from Israeli territory, was launched based on the trajectory of the Houthi missile tracked by the IDF Air Force’s detection system – probably a so-called Green Pine long-range radar – and the missile was destroyed “at the most appropriate time and place and outside the territory of the State of Israel”. This means that the kinetic “kill vehicle” of the interceptor missile (Arrow does not carry a warhead) should have destroyed the target physically and outside the Earth’s atmosphere (exo-atmospheric) in its mid-flight phase. It was also mentioned that on the same morning, IDF aircraft were launched after an unspecified aerial threat was also detected in the Red Sea area and those enemy targets approaching in the area were intercepted.

Archive
Images of the rocket remains found in Jordan.

Remains in Jordan
Like an entry on “Clash Report on X” debris from a Houthi cruise missile has surfaced in Jordan, which lies on the flight path from Yemen towards the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat. However, it is unclear whether it was shot down or – 1,600 kilometers is the range limit of most cruise missiles – simply crashed. In terms of Iranian missile armament, it appears to be a Quds-3 or a similar variant, an Iranian design based on the Soviet Russian Kh-55, which was also used conventionally or as a so-called “Decoy” in the war against Ukraine. war against the Ukraine Ukraine. Successful tests in Hawaii
In the same week of the defense successes, the US missile defense agency MDA announced that an Aegis system had been deployed on the DDG-120 USS Carl M. Levin (designated as FTM-48) simultaneously hit two short-range ballistic missiles with Standard Missile 3 Block IA (SM-3 Block IA), as well as two anti-ship cruise missiles – China relies heavily on this category in its rivalry with the US Navy – with two SM-2 Block IIIAs.

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