Israel faces the same problem as almost all the Armed Forces in the wars of the 21st century: a lack of ammunition. The US believes that its army is running out of Arrow missiles, a weapon jointly developed by the American company Boeing and the Israeli IAI to shoot down the ballistic missiles that Iran is using to attack the Jewish State at high altitudes. According to some sources, at the current attrition rate, Israel would have to start rationing the use of these projectiles, which are critical for its defense, as early as next week.
The inventory problems of Arrow could be one of the reasons for the massive naval and especially aerial deployment that the United States is carrying out in Europe and the Middle East, focusing not on B-2 bombers - which would be necessary to bomb the Iranian nuclear complex of Fordo - but on fighter-bombers, including the F-22, a highly specialized aircraft designed for air-to-air combat and the only aircraft in the world capable of shooting down ballistic missiles like those used by Iran. The US already has four THAAD anti-aircraft missile batteries - similar to the Arrow - in the Middle East, as well as several destroyers.
Ships and ground batteries are, as acknowledged by the Donald Trump administration, shooting down Iranian missiles. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that, in addition to these systems, "the United States is making accelerated and massive use of interceptors," directly referring to the F-22. According to this theory, American fighters are already shooting down Iranian missiles heading towards Israel.
Therefore, although no one knows with any certainty what is happening on the front lines, it seems that the two contenders have been caught in a race against time to see who runs out of weapons first. Iran has its ballistic missiles. And Israel has the Arrow and, at a much lower altitude, the Iron Dome, largely funded by the US. Whoever runs out of missiles or anti-missiles first will lose.
Israel has its own production capacity and support from the US, while Iran does not seem to have received any help from its allies - Russia, which has suddenly forgotten its mutual assistance agreement with Tehran, China, and North Korea. Additionally, Israel's missile manufacturing facilities are being targeted by the Israeli Air Force. However, the Arrow is a complex missile that cannot be mass-produced overnight. In this war, Iran seems to have moderately successfully followed the strategy used by its ally Hamas during the massive attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, by saturating its enemy's anti-aircraft defenses with a huge number of projectiles.
Fordo, the Iranian nuclear complex buried in an almost impenetrable sacred mountain
Here, the role of the famous Iron Dome seems to be relatively secondary, as this system is designed for short-range and low-altitude missiles, like those used by the pro-Iranian Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which is now practically dismantled as a combat force, and which only reach a maximum altitude of 50 kilometers and have not been used for 14 months.
The missiles launched by Iran, however, reach 400 kilometers in altitude before starting to descend towards the target. This is where the Arrow and THAAD come into play, two highly sophisticated weapons, as evidenced by the fact that only China has anti-aircraft missiles comparable to both. If all goes according to plan, Europe will start having its own system, the Franco-Italian SAMP/T by the end of this year. Germany has not been as precise and has purchased the Arrow.
All of this brings us back to the issue of the US deployment, which has mainly consisted of tanker aircraft, ideal for maintaining uninterrupted bombing - or aircraft interdiction, including missiles - for days, as they allow fighters to refuel in flight.
Within this deployment, the most significant are the F-22, which have only engaged in combat situations against the famous Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US in 2022 and later against a series of strange aircraft that no one ever knew what they were, many of them in northern Canada and Alaska, although they were also used as electronic warfare platforms in 2014 and 2015 to coordinate bombings against the Islamic State (IS).
Additionally, the United States has a very limited number - for its Armed Forces - of F-22, with only 168 units in active service. Some of them have been sent to the Middle East, according to images from websites that track aircraft flights based on radars and, sometimes, transponders, which provide the position of the aircraft. Transponders can be turned off or altered, and the F-22 is invisible to radars, so the fact that some of them have been identified means that the Donald Trump administration is not particularly concerned about hiding their presence.
Therefore, the F-22 could be a key element in preventing the war from escalating, if they manage to, in conjunction with THAAD and destroyers, sufficiently erode Iran's ability to launch missiles so that Israel can restore its anti-aircraft defense line. However, if the US uses B-2 bombers to attack the underground nuclear facility in Fordo, Iran, the Raptors could also have another mission: shooting down Iranian missiles aimed at any of the 18 US bases in the Middle East and the country's ships, at the refineries of Gulf Arab countries, and also at Israel.
The Raptor, which some have mocked because it will be the first fighter in history to retire from service having only shot down balloons, could have a much more dramatic exit.