In short: David’s Sling is the middle layer of Israel’s air defense, sitting between Iron Dome below it and the Arrow family above. Built by Rafael with the American firm RTX, it uses the two-stage Stunner interceptor to hit cruise missiles, drones, and medium-range rockets that fly too high or too far for Iron Dome.
People talk about Israeli air defense as if it were one shield. It is not. It is a stack of separate systems, each tuned to a different slice of the sky, and David’s Sling covers the awkward middle that neither the cheap short-range layer nor the expensive ballistic layer was designed to handle.
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Iron Dome is built for rockets landing a few dozen kilometers away. The Arrow family reaches for ballistic missiles high above the atmosphere. Between them sits a gap: cruise missiles, large-caliber rockets, drones, and short-range ballistic missiles at ranges of roughly 40 to 300 kilometers. David’s Sling was declared operational in 2017 to close that gap.
How the layers divide the work
The point of a layered system is that no single interceptor has to do everything. A short-range battery firing dozens of cheap rounds cannot also chase a cruise missile skimming in from 200 kilometers out. That division of labor is why multilayer missile defense became the design principle rather than a single all-purpose weapon.
What the Stunner interceptor actually does
The interceptor is called Stunner. It carries no explosive warhead. Instead it destroys the target by physically colliding with it, a method known as hit-to-kill, guided by both radar and an electro-optical seeker in its distinctive dolphin-shaped nose. One Stunner costs around a million dollars, which is why the Iron Dome layer stays busy with the cheaper threats and David’s Sling is held back for the harder ones.
David’s Sling is built to engage:
- Cruise missiles flying low and slow
- Medium and long-range rockets beyond Iron Dome’s reach
- Short-range ballistic missiles below Arrow’s zone
- Large drones and loitering munitions
- Some aircraft, as a secondary role
Why one shot is rarely the plan
Air defense doctrine assumes misses. Operators may fire more than one interceptor at a serious threat, and a battery commander weighs cost against consequence in seconds. This is the same logic behind the idea that a single interceptor almost never wins the fight on its own, especially against saturating salvos meant to overwhelm a battery.
Full technical figures on the system and its interceptor are documented by Wikipedia’s David’s Sling article, including its joint development history with RTX and its 2017 operational date.