After drone interceptions, Rafael hopes to take Israel’s maritime Iron Dome global

JERUSALEM — Earlier this week an Israeli Sa’ar 6 corvette ship intercepted an unmanned aerial threat heading towards Israeli economic waters, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, which posted a video of the interception online.

It’s unclear what exactly the IDF used to take out the drone, but the incident was only the latest to highlight the growing maritime threat from drones — a threat that Israeli defense giant Rafael says its C-Dome air defense system is fit to combat.

C-Dome systems have been installed on the Sa’ar 6s, Israel’s most advanced corvettes, since the ships came online in December 2020 and, according to Rafael vice president of naval warfare systems Ran Tavor, they’ve performed well enough, including in recent combat related to Gaza operations, that the firm is looking abroad to other “tier one” navies as potential customers for the system.

“We now see a growing demand for such systems for rapid deployment around the world,” Tavor told Breaking Defense in a recent interview.

C-Dome is the maritime version of Israel’s famed Iron Dome air defense system, which is itself the lower layer of Israel’s land-based defenses. (The second tier is David’s Sling, which deals with medium-range threats. The top tier is the Arrow, which intercepts ballistic missiles and exo-atmospheric threats.)

For Israeli corvettes, the C-Dome system was installed during the ships’ production in Germany, but Rafael envisions and wholly self-contained platform in which the interceptors, launcher and combat management system are all delivered together as a package — similar to how the system has been installed on some of Israel’s older Sa’ar 5 corvettes. Plugged into the ship, they can be used with the ship’s radar, or work with a third-party radar system, in what Tavor referred to as a “turnkey” solution.

“We understood quite a long time ago that we want to have a naval version of Iron Dome, back in 2017 when we actually tested a prototype of the system in which we took the land version and actually put it on a deck of a ship,” Tavor said.

C-Dome has been deployed in a new era of unmanned combat, when less well-equipped militaries, like the Houthi rebels in Yemen, can fly relatively cheaply made attack drones at pricey ships. Appropriately, an operational C-Dome made its first combat interception in April, when it took out an unmanned aerial vehicle over the Red Sea, the IDF said at the time.

“We are facing asymmetric warfare where the threats are cheap, coming in large quantities,” Tavor told Breaking Defense.

He described a battlefield at sea where navies currently use expensive interceptors, which he says can cost millions of dollars each and will drive navies to bankruptcy if used at high rates.

“The C-Dome sits in a very nice working [price] point where the interceptors and the whole system are relatively low cost, or affordable I would say, because it was planned ahead to intercept low-cost mortars and other threats,” he said.

Working with the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, Tavor said the C-Dome was tested on different threat scenarios at sea. “The operational envelope with the system is quite wide. We anticipated the current and future threats we are now facing,” he said.

In addition to so-called “low and slow” threats from drones, Tavor said the C-Dome has been successful against “more advanced threats.”

“It did catch us by surprise but it is always nice to see that what you anticipated actually happened,” he said, without providing details. “You need to tackle different types of threats. Due to timeline from detection to interception.”

Rafael declined to identify potential foreign customers for its C-Dome system, but previous reports suggest Australia could be among the interested parties.

Tavor did note that the company is in talks with navies and shipyards regarding integration of C-Dome into different phases of design for ships. “C-Dome requires small footprint and doesn’t need a very distinct infrastructure we need just to plan ahead,” he said.