Israel’s operational deployment of Iron Beam is often described as another layer in the country’s air-defense architecture. That framing misses the significance. Iron Beam is not simply a new interceptor; it marks a fundamental shift in the economics and logic of modern warfare.

For decades, Israel and other democracies faced a punishing asymmetry. Non-state actors could fire inexpensive rockets, mortars, and drones in volume, forcing defenders to respond with interceptors costing orders of magnitude more. The strategy was not accuracy but attrition: fire enough, and eventually the defender exhausts their magazine.

Iron Beam inverts that equation.

A laser interceptor replaces missiles with electricity.........

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