What Is Iron Beam? How Israel’s Laser Compares With Iron Dome

Iron Beam is a ground-based laser weapon that destroys small aerial threats by heating them until they fail. Its Hebrew name is Or Eitan, adopted in 2025 in memory of Captain Eitan Oster, an officer killed in Lebanon in October 2024; it was previously called Magen Or, The Times of Israel reported.

Rafael first showed the concept in 2014 and spent more than a decade developing it with Israel’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D) and the Israeli Air Force. The ground system uses a solid-state laser in the 100 to 150 kilowatt class, The Defense Post reported, and its range is about 10 km. Its targets are drones, mortar rounds and short-range rockets. It is not designed to stop ballistic missiles, Calcalist noted in March 2026.

Rafael is building a family around it: an upgraded Iron Beam 450, a truck-mounted Iron Beam M and a lighter Lite Beam for armoured vehicles, with a naval version in development. Elbit Systems began work on an airborne version for the Israeli Air Force in August 2025.

It holds a concentrated beam of light on a target until the heat breaks it apart, usually by cutting into a rocket’s casing or a drone’s airframe. Each shot uses only electrical power, so the system has no magazine to run dry as long as it has a steady energy supply.

That strength comes with limits. The laser has to stay on one target until it fails before turning to the next, so a large salvo arriving at once stretches it. Its main weakness is low visibility: heavy cloud and bad weather sap the beam, The Times of Israel noted when the system was declared operational in September 2025. A Tamir missile flies through cloud.

Iron Dome fires missiles; Iron Beam fires light. An Iron Dome battery has three or four launchers, each holding up to 20 Tamir interceptors, a battle management system and an ELM-2084 radar built by Israel Aerospace Industries, according to the CSIS Missile Defense Project. It engages rockets, artillery shells and drones at about 4 to 70 km and fires only at those heading for populated areas.

Iron Dome entered service in 2011, and Israeli officials have claimed interception rates of about 90 percent against the rockets it chose to engage, figures without an independent audit. The United States provided almost $1.3 billion for the system between fiscal 2011 and 2015, CSIS says. On June 30, 2026, the Defense Ministry said Iron Dome had been upgraded with lessons from the Iran war and that Iron Beam was tested alongside it, controlled from Iron Dome’s own command centre, The Times of Israel reported.

In range, Iron Dome reaches about 70 km and Iron Beam about 10 km. In targets, Iron Dome covers rockets, artillery shells and drones; Iron Beam covers drones, mortars and short-range rockets.

Iron Beam, by a very wide margin. No official price is published for the Tamir; CSIS cites recent estimates of $40,000 to $50,000, against an initial $100,000, and other estimates run as high as $100,000, as set out in our Iron Dome vs Patriot vs THAAD guide. A full Iron Dome battery cost about $100 million to produce in 2012-13, CSIS says.

Each Iron Beam interception is expected to cost a few shekels, roughly the price of the electricity, according to Calcalist. The laser units themselves are estimated at tens of millions of dollars each. Retired Brigadier General Ran Kochav, a former commander of the Israeli Air Force’s air defence command, told Calcalist it would be “very difficult” to reach the promised figure of $5 per interception once development costs are counted. For comparison, Britain’s Ministry of Defence puts its DragonFire naval laser at about £10 a shot.

No. Iron Beam is planned as an extra layer under Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow, taking the cheap, close-in targets so that costly interceptors are saved for threats a laser cannot handle. Its 10 km reach, its weakness in bad weather and the need for many batteries leave Iron Dome as Israel’s main short-range shield for years. Some projections cited by The Jerusalem Post put laser defence against long-range threats such as Iranian ballistic missiles at least five to 10 years away, a job that today falls to Arrow and to the U.S. systems whose costs we set out in How Much Does a THAAD Missile Cost?

Other armies are following the same path more slowly. The U.S. Army does not expect its first production counter-drone laser, the 30-kilowatt LOCUST X3, to be ready before early 2028, as we reported in the LOCUST X3 explainer.