World News

The U.S. Army has been estimated to have consumed 15-20 of all munitions for its globally deployed arsenal of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) long range anti-missile systems, after deployment to support Israeli air defences during the country’s 11 days of hostilities with Iran.

A highly specialised asset designed to intercept medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles, the U.S. Army fields seven systems across five air defence regiments, and is set to operationalise an eighth by the end of the year.

The systems are depended on to counter the arsenals of five potential adversaries including North Korea, China, Russia and Belarus, as well as Iran. Video footage has shown the launch of 39 interceptors to intercept Iranian missiles from June 13-24, although only a small portion of launches were captured on film partly due to the strict wartime censorship that was put in place in Israel.

Presuming at a conservative estimate that the filmed launches from THAAD batteries accounted for 50-66 percent of total launches, total expenditure of interceptors amounted to approximately 60-80 interceptors during the 11 day conflict.