A recent Washington Post report reveals striking figures from Operation Epic Fury: the United States expended over 200 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors — roughly half the Pentagon’s total inventory — along with more than 100 Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6 ) interceptors defending Israel, while Israeli forces fired fewer than 190 of their own. The Post frames this primarily as a story about burden: the U.S. military expended far more advanced interceptors to protect Israel than Israeli forces did. 

That framing, while factually accurate, risks obscuring the more important point. The objective of integrated missile defense is not cost parity between allies — it is stopping missiles from landing on American allies and American forces stationed in the region. Judged against that standard, the operation worked. Every interceptor fired by either country contributed to the same outcome: protecting civilian populations and military personnel from an Iranian ballistic missile threat. A ledger that simply totals interceptors by national flag tells you very little about whether the mission succeeded. 

This Was Never Two Separate Defenses 

The U.S.-Israel missile defense relationship is not new, and it was never designed to operate as two parallel systems keeping their own scorecards. As I noted in a recent article, it dates back more than thirty years, to the first Gulf War, when Patriot batteries were first deployed to defend Israel against Iraqi Scud missiles. In the decades since, the relationship has been........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)