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Report: Israel Faces Possible Shortage of Interceptor Missiles

An Arrow II missile interceptor is displayed in front of journalists at an Israeli air defense command in the Palmahim military base south of Tel Aviv May 12, 2011. (Reuters)
An Arrow II missile interceptor is displayed in front of journalists at an Israeli air defense command in the Palmahim military base south of Tel Aviv May 12, 2011. (Reuters)
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Report: Israel Faces Possible Shortage of Interceptor Missiles

An Arrow II missile interceptor is displayed in front of journalists at an Israeli air defense command in the Palmahim military base south of Tel Aviv May 12, 2011. (Reuters)
An Arrow II missile interceptor is displayed in front of journalists at an Israeli air defense command in the Palmahim military base south of Tel Aviv May 12, 2011. (Reuters)

Israel is encountering a potential shortage of rocket and missile interceptors in its air defenses, reports revealed on Tuesday a day after the country’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant admitted Israel needs US support in air armament.

The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said that during the security review presented to Israeli ministers Monday, Gallant was asked about armaments.

He replied that there was a large gap when he entered the Defense Ministry, which he instructed to be filled before the start of the war.

Gallant said, “We are still dependent in air armaments and American planes,” but he clarified that “we are working with all our might to promote blue-white production and the development of independence” on the issue of armaments.

Gallant’s comments were confirmed by the London-based Financial Times, which on Tuesday said that Israel faces a severe shortage of interceptor missiles, detailing how the US is rushing to help close the gaps.

According to the report, the Pentagon on Sunday announced the deployment of the THAAD system that will arrive in Israel, in preparation for the expected attack in Iran, which could lead to further regional escalation.

“Israel’s munitions issue is serious,” Dana Stroll, a former senior official at the US Department of Defense, responsible for the Middle East, explained to the newspaper.

“If Iran responds to an Israel attack [with a massive air strike campaign], and Hezbollah joins in too, Israel air defenses will be stretched,” she said, adding that US stockpiles are not limitless. “The US can’t continue supplying Ukraine and Israel at the same pace. We are reaching a tipping point,” she added.

Replenishing stocks

Boaz Levy, chief executive of Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned company which makes the Arrow interceptors used to shoot down ballistic missiles, told the newspaper he is running triple shifts to keep production lines running.

“Some of our lines are working 24 hours, seven days a week. Our goal is to meet all our obligations,” Levy said, adding that the time required to produce interceptor missiles is “not a matter of days”.

While Israel does not disclose the size of its stockpiles, he added: “It is no secret that we need to replenish stocks.”

The British newspaper explained that until this week, Israel's three-tiered air defense systems have succeeded in intercepting most of the UAVs and missiles fired by Iran and its proxies at the country.

The Iron Dome system intercepted short-range rockets and UAVs fired by Hamas from Gaza, while the David Slingshot intercepted heavier rockets fired from Lebanon, and the Arrow system stopped ballistic missiles from Iran.

During the Iranian attack in April, according to the Israeli army, a 99% interception rate was achieved against the barrage, which included 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles.

Israel reportedly had less success in repelling the second barrage, that took place at the beginning of the month, which included more from 180 ballistic missiles.

Intelligence sources told the newspaper that nearly 30 missiles hit the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel near Be'er Sheva.

200 missiles

The FT report stirred heated debate in Israel. Brigadier General Zvika Chaimovitz, former commander of the air defense system, told Ynet on Tuesday: “The THAAD system is a significant force component and I don't want to compare it with the Arrow system, but in the end, you add dozens more interceptors.”

“It is a significant force that joins our forces, and we have seen scenarios of 200 missiles. It is assumed that if the conflict with Iran continues, we are expected to see more here.”

“The US is a great power. When you look at capabilities, it's not a numbers game. In the end it's a combination of defense and attack,” he remarked.

Yedioth Ahronoth commentator Ron Ben Yishai pointed out in a recent piece that the agreement being formed with the US to place THAAD in Israel is as much a result of American coercion as it is of Israeli necessity.

“The Israeli army’s need is clear: It needs the addition of American interceptor missiles and launchers to deal with the hundreds of missiles that the Iranians may launch, if and when Israel responds to the attack against it on October 1,” he said.

In this case, the quantities and numbers speak for themselves, noted Ben Yishai. “The more missiles are launched in one or two small volleys in order to saturate the defense systems - the more launchers, interceptor missiles and radars are needed,” he continued.

Yair Katz, the head of the workers union at Israel Aircraft Industries, dismissed the claims, stating that “The Financial Times headline is wrong. Israel has enough interceptors to maintain a war on multiple fronts.”

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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.