Operation Rising Lion was first and foremost a war of technology, said Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the board of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
Sitting with Defense & Tech in his office overlooking central Israel for a wide-ranging conversation, Steinitz said that the 12-day war between the two arch-enemies “was a clear demonstration of advanced technology that gave Israel an edge. Technology doesn’t only give an advantage, but the utmost supremacy over our enemies.”
Steinitz, who was appointed as the chairman of Rafael two years ago, is a veteran of Israel’s defense sphere. He served as a member of Knesset and minister for over two decades, holding key positions, including intelligence minister, strategic affairs minister, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and chairman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Secret Service.
He was among the key architects of Israel’s security doctrine. He has always placed an emphasis on the threat posed by Iran and its nuclear program, and played a central role in the discovery of Syria’s nuclear project, which led to Israel’s decision to destroy Syria’s reactor in September 2007.
Nearly 20 years after the destruction of the reactor in the Deir el-Zor region, the threat posed by Iran was very real.
On the night of June 13, Israelis were woken up by alerts to take immediate shelter as Israel Air Force platforms and Mossad agents began the opening round of Operation Rising Lion.
The war between Israel and Iran threw the world into a new chapter of modern warfare, even more than Operation Swords of Iron and the war between Ukraine and Russia, where Moscow has still not been able to gain any sort of supremacy over Kyiv in close to three years of war.
Neither Israel nor Iran deployed a significant number of ground troops, and there were no traditional battlefield engagements. Rather, the war was carried out with long-range ballistic missiles, precision air-to-ground munitions, cyberattacks, UAVs, and other autonomous systems.
“Iran has significant capabilities,” Steinitz said. “They are very smart people, and they had a lot of air defense batteries, but Israeli technology had a lot of surprises up its sleeve.”
Steinitz referred to the technological gap between Israel and Iran as “critical” in the outcome of the war.
Pointing to the air forces of Israel and Iran, Steinitz said that both sides are flying aircraft that are close to 50 years old, “but the subsystems on the Israeli aircraft are the best of the best. The aircraft aren’t the issue; what matters is what technology is on them.”
And, he stressed, while “many people talk about systems that are ‘good enough,’ that’s dangerous. The damage can be enormous if you don’t have the best of the best. You need the best of the best to win and deter your enemies. You need technology that is decisive.
“That is the difference between losing and winning, destroying or being destroyed.”
While Rafael systems played a significant role inside Iran, without the company’s flagship Iron Dome, the damage in Israel would have been far more.
During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, large Israeli cities were struck by missiles for the first time. In response, then-defense minister Amir Peretz decided to develop the Iron Dome, despite opposition from army brass. After a lengthy development process, and with the financial help of the United States, Iron Dome went into service in April 2011, its first battery placed near Beersheba. It made its first interception of a Grad rocket fired from the Gaza Strip just days later.
Twenty years later, the Iron Dome intercepted not only rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, but UAVs and even ballistic missiles launched from Iran.
“The Iron Dome saved the State of Israel,” Steinitz asserted. “Nobody could believe it would intercept ballistic missiles, drones and UAVs, but it has. And very successfully.”
Forged under the constant pressure of persistent threats, Israel has built a multilayered air defense architecture that has proven vital in real-time conflict. The Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 3 systems constitute a robust shield against short, medium, and long-range threats.
During the war with Iran, this integrated system intercepted the majority of more than 550 ballistic missiles launched at Israeli cities, averting mass casualties and safeguarding critical infrastructure. The Arrow 3 system, operating outside Earth’s atmosphere, and the Iron Dome proved vital in neutralizing these deadly payloads.
Of the 1,100 drones launched by the Islamic Republic of Iran toward Israel, only one struck a residential home, causing damage. The rest were downed by the Iron Dome as well as aerial platforms of the IAF using Rafael’s Python missiles.
“The interception rate was unprecedented,” he said, stressing that “there is no parallel system anywhere else in the world.”
Rafael's stunning new project
While the Iron Dome may be the current star of the show, Rafael’s laser project will soon overshadow it.
In May, the IDF revealed that the laser-based air defense system successfully intercepted close to 40 drones launched by Hezbollah in northern Israel. According to Steinitz, the system has intercepted close to 100 hostile aerial targets in total.
Steinitz said that the first operational system will be delivered to the IDF by November 2025, with additional operational systems set to be delivered throughout 2026.
“We’ve shown in tests that the Iron Beam laser system can intercept rockets, cruise missiles, UAVs, and 155m. artillery shells.”
The modular version of Iron Beam, known as Iron Beam M, which can be placed on jeeps or other mobile platforms, has also been proven during the war to be very good at intercepting drones.
This is a historic breakthrough, Steinitz said, adding that while superpowers from around the world have invested years and millions of dollars in laser weapons, it was Israel and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems that succeeded in bringing this technology to the battlefield.
And while hostile countries, including Iran, continue to advance their weapons capabilities, including hypersonic missiles, with laser technologies “the speed of the target is no longer an issue when you can kill it with a laser. The burden will be on the aggressor when this laser system is operational.”
Another of the advantages of the laser system is the cost. While an Iron Dome missile can cost around $100,000 per interceptor, it would cost around $3 per laser beam. Moreover, there would never be a shortage of interceptors; the system would just need to be charged.
According to Steinitz, lasers will be better suited to intercept drone swarms than the Iron Dome, and in the coming years the system will be able to intercept long-range ballistic missiles, even in outer space.