WASHINGTON: The deployment of a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army’s air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday.
The service’s top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants.

“The air defense, artillery community is the most stressed. They have the highest ‘optempo’ really of any part of the Army,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, using a phrase meaning the pace of operations. “We’re just constantly trying to be as disciplined as we can, and give Secretary Austin the information he needs to accurately assess the strain on the force when he’s considering future operational deployments.”
Wormuth said the Army has to be careful about “what we take on. But of course, in a world this volatile, you know, sometimes we have to do what we have to do.”
The Pentagon announced the THAAD deployment Sunday, saying it was authorized at the direction of President Joe Biden. US officials said the system will be moved from a location in the continental United States to Israel and that it will take a number of days for it and the soldiers to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of troop movements.

The move adds to what have been growing tensions within the Defense Department about what weapons the US can afford to send to Ukraine, Israel or elsewhere and the resulting risks to America’s military readiness and its ability to protect the nation.
“Everybody wants US Army air defense forces,” Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said Monday as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the US Army’s annual conference. “This is our most deployed formation.”
The decision to send the THAAD came as Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel. Israel already has a multilayered air defense system, but a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base Sunday killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others, underscoring the potential need for greater protection.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. The Sunday drone attack was Hezbollah’s deadliest strike since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
Since the THAAD deployment only involves about 100 soldiers, it won’t add a tremendous amount of additional strain on air defense forces, Wormuth said at the conference.
But it adds to the pace of their deployments. Since the frenetic pace of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has subsided, the military has tried to ensure that service members have sufficient time at home to train and reset between deployments.

Shrinking that so-called dwell time can have an impact on the Army’s ability to keep good soldiers in the force.
“They’re very good, but obviously deploying for a year and coming back for a year and deploying for a year — it’s tough to do for anybody,” George said.
He said the Army is looking at a range of ways to limit the impact on recruiting and retention, including growing the force and modernizing the systems so that it takes fewer soldiers to operate them.
But the repeated deployments makes it difficult to get the systems into the depots where they can be upgraded.
As a result, Wormuth said, Army leaders are trying to make their arguments as clear as possible when combatant commanders go to Austin and ask for another Patriot system in the Middle East or another one for Ukraine.
“We need to be able to bring these units home to be able to go through that modernization process,” she said. “So we’re trying to lay that out for Secretary Austin so that he can weigh those risks — essentially current versus future risks — as he makes recommendations to the president about whether to send the Patriot here or there.”

TEL AVIV, Israel: One of the worst mass casualty strikes on Israel in a year of war came not from dozens of Iranian ballistic missiles nor the repeated barrages of rocket fire launched by Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, it was a single drone.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens.
It’s the latest achievement for Hezbollah’s drone fleet and has shined a light on Israel’s struggle over the past year of war to knock down unmanned aircraft incoming from as far away as Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
Over the years, Israel has built up its aerial defense array to provide broad protection against short-range rocket fire and medium- and long-range missiles, although experts caution it is not airtight. While the system has taken down drones repeatedly, many have penetrated Israel’s airspace and sidestepped its defenses, in some cases with deadly results.
The drone traversed Israeli airspace unimpeded
On Sunday evening, reports emerged of a mass casualty event about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the Lebanese border. A drone had slammed into a mess hall filled with troops eating dinner, according to Israeli media, killing four soldiers and wounding 67 people.
Minutes earlier, air raid sirens had blared in northern Israel as the aircraft flew overhead. But no sirens sounded at the base, giving the soldiers no advance warning and indicating that the drone may have fallen off Israel’s radar.
An Israeli security official said Israel was still investigating how the drone made it through Israel’s air defenses. A pair of drones initially entered Israeli airspace, but while one was shot down, the other one continued to its target.
Hezbollah, which said the attack was in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, said the drone was “able to penetrate the Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and reach its target. It claimed it had outsmarted Israel’s air defenses by simultaneously launching dozens of missiles and “squadrons” of drones simultaneously.
It was the second deadly drone strike in just two weeks. Earlier this month, a drone launched from Iraq killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded roughly two dozen, according to Israeli media. On Friday, during a major Jewish holiday, a Hezbollah drone slammed into a nursing home in central Israel, causing damage.
“We already have six dead in the past 10 days from drones. That’s too much,” said Ran Kochav, a former head of the Israeli military’s aerial defense command.
Drones, he said, “have become a real threat.”
Drones are harder to detect and track than rockets or missiles
Drones, or UAVs, are unmanned aircraft that can be operated from afar. Drones can enter, surveil and attack enemy territory more discreetly than missiles and rockets. Israel has a formidable arsenal of drones, capable of carrying out spy missions and attacks. It has developed a drone capable of reaching archenemy Iran, some 1500 kilometers (1,000 miles) away.
But Israel’s enemies have caught Israel off-guard on a number of occasions over the past year, often with deadly consequences. In July, a drone launched from Yemen traveled some 270 kilometers (160 miles) from Israel’s southern tip, all the way to Tel Aviv, slamming into a downtown building and killing one person without it having been intercepted.
The Israeli security official said drones are harder to detect for a number of reasons: They fly slowly and often include plastic components, having a weaker thermal footprint with radar systems than powerful rockets and missiles. The trajectory is also harder to track. Drones can have roundabout flight paths, can come from any direction, fly lower to the ground and — because they are much smaller than rockets — can be mistaken for birds.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into the mess hall strike was still underway.
Kochav said that Israel spent years focusing on strengthening its air defense systems to improve protection against rockets and missiles. But drones were not seen as a top priority. During the current fighting, that has meant Israel’s ability to detect and intercept drones is not as successful as its capabilities in the face of rockets and missiles, Kochav said.
Hezbollah’s drone program receives support from Iran
Hezbollah began using Iranian-made drones after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and sent the first reconnaissance Mirsad drone over Israel’s airspace in 2004. Hezbollah’s drone program still receives substantial assistance from Iran, and the UAVs are believed to be assembled by experts of the militant group in Lebanon.
Drones have become an “Iranian-inspired, strategic system” for Hezbollah, according to Tal Beeri, the director of research for The Alma Research and Education Center, a think tank that studies Hezbollah and Israel’s north. The militant group has launched roughly 1,500 surveillance and attack drones since it began striking Israel in October 2023, according to the group’s count.
The attack drones, which Beeri said often hit civilian targets, have a payload of 10 kilograms (22 lbs) of explosives and can fly hundreds of kilometers (miles). He said Hezbollah in May used for the first and only time a drone that was able to fire an anti-tank missile and that it may possess more.
Hezbollah has also used drones to erode Israel’s air-defense capabilities by slamming them into the very batteries and infrastructure meant to take them down. Earlier this year, Hezbollah said it used an Ababil explosive drone to down Israel’s Sky Dew observation balloon, a component of its aerial defense.
On Monday evening, Hezbollah released a video showing some of its militants in a warehouse full of drones. The video shows drones on launchers and at the end displays a caption that reads: “Our capabilities are intact.”
Israel says it is working to tackle the threat
On Monday, on a visit to the training camp hit by the drone, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged to learn from the strike and said Israel was “concentrating significant efforts in developing solutions” to tackle the drone threat, without elaborating.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also visited the base and soldiers injured in the attack, noting that Israel had paid “a painful price.”
Kochav said there were ways to combat the drones that could be considered. Detection capabilities could be expanded to include acoustic radars to pick up on the sound of the drone’s engine or electro-optics, which could allow Israeli surveillance to better identify them. He said rockets, fighter jets and helicopters could be deployed for interception, and that electronic warfare could be used to overtake the drones and divert them.
“We were busy in recent years ... and unmanned (aerial vehicles) was not a top priority,” he said. “The results unfortunately are not good.”