Tonight, at about half past one, the sound of a serious explosion was heard in the centre and south of the country. It was a large Syrian C-200 type anti-aircraft missile exploding, fired at our air force planes that were attacking enemy targets in Syria.
The missile missed the planes, continued its flight and exploded in mid-air. Its parts were found in the Negev, and some large fragments in the Bedouin town of Rahat.
There have already been several incidents like this one in the past when a C-200 type missile entered Israeli airspace. On one occasion, it was even intercepted by our anti-missile.
It must be stressed that this incident does not represent a new “escalation” or a new threat to security. Anti-aircraft missiles of this type have a very long range, so if they miss their target and continue to fly, they can reach hundreds of kilometres away. Basically, it is an outdated missile, the first prototypes of which were provided to the Syrian regime by the Soviet government 40 years ago.
According to an IDF spokesman, the missile exploded in mid-air. In other words, it exploded on its own, there was no need to intercept it. The wreckage of the missile was scattered over a large area. It should be noted that the interception of such a missile is accompanied by a dispersion of fragments, both of the missile and of the interceptor.
In any case, it is reasonable to assume that the IDF carefully checked whether it was necessary to intercept the missile before it exploded when it crossed the border and entered our airspace. It is also possible that the battery that fired the missile would later be attacked by our air force.
The Syrian supply of S-200 systems is not large. They only have three or four batteries, in contrast to the dozens of batteries of the SA-2 (C-75 Dvina) and SA-3 (C-125 Neva) systems and the self-propelled SA-6 (Cube) and SA-8 (Wasp) anti-missile systems, which the Syrians also own in dozens.
All these air defense systems are weak against the electronic warfare systems of our Air Force, so it won’t be too difficult for our Air Force to seriously damage them including the C-200 if they decide to do so.