Sarah Fainberg, Yuval Peleg and Tomer Fadlon
At dawn, on August 25, 2024, air-raid sirens wailed across Israel. Seconds later, the sky filled with arcs of interceptors rising to meet an incoming salvo of rockets, missiles, and drones. Many expected a massive Hezbollah retaliation after the Israel Defense Forces eliminated senior commander Fuad Shukr the month before. When the all-clear sounded, the damage to Israel was negligible.
Israel’s success that morning was not the result of interception alone. While active defense systems intercepted most of what Hezbollah managed to launch, two additional lines of defense proved decisive. Shortly before the salvo, Israeli fighter jets struck launcher clusters and command nodes across southern Lebanon, sharply reducing the volume of fire before the salvo could even be launched. This use of preemptive strikes to degrade an adversary’s attack capacity (what we term here offensive defense) constituted the first line of protection on August 25. The final layer was passive defense (early warning, shelter, and disciplined civilian behavior) that absorbed what penetrated outer defenses.
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