U.S. Army Selects Israeli Tamir Interceptor for IFPC Inc 2 Cruise Missile Defense Program.

Rafael Systems Global Sustainment has been selected for Phase 1 of the U.S. Army’s IFPC Inc 2 Second Interceptor effort, proposing a Tamir-based missile derived from Israel’s Iron Dome. The move expands the Army’s mid-tier air defense options as it seeks stronger protection against cruise missiles, drones, and rocket attacks.

Rafael Systems Global Sustainment has publicly confirmed it has been selected for Phase 1 of the U.S. Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) Second Interceptor effort, positioning an Iron Dome-derived interceptor concept in the Army’s next round of mid-tier air defense modernization. In a LinkedIn statement dated 11 February 2026, the company said it will work with the Army’s SHIELD Project Office to adapt technologies derived from Israel’s Iron Dome, while retired Lt. Gen. Joe Anderson, CEO of RSGS, framed the selection as a vote of confidence and a fast path to deliver additional protection for deployed U.S. forces.
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Iron Dome-derived Tamir interceptor proposed for the U.S. Army's IFPC second-interceptor effort, offering an all-weather, high-agility missile with electro-optical guidance and a proximity-fuzed blast warhead designed to defeat cruise missiles, drones, and RAM threats while boosting base-defense magazine depth (Picture source: Israeli MoD).

For the U.S. Army, the timing is important: IFPC is designed to protect fixed and semi-fixed sites and to bridge the awkward seam between short-range air defense and higher-tier systems like Patriot and THAAD. Congress’s own research arm describes IFPC as a mobile, ground-based system built to defeat cruise missiles, unmanned aircraft systems, and rockets, artillery, and mortars, with a launcher-and-interceptor architecture intended for growth as threats evolve. In parallel, the Army has already moved IFPC Inc 2 into production-relevant contracting, awarding Dynetics a major IDIQ framework in November 2024 to procure initial launchers and accelerate fielding.

IFPC Inc 2’s Enduring Shield launcher was initially paired with a ground-launched AIM-9X Sidewinder, giving soldiers a credible, rapidly integrable option, but one that is not optimized for the hardest mid-tier profiles. As Enduring Shield matured, Army officials concluded they needed a more capable interceptor to tackle lower-flying, supersonic cruise missiles, a class of targets that compresses engagement timelines and stresses seeker performance in dense clutter near the ground. Industry reporting indicates that Rafael’s approach centers on an updated version of the Tamir interceptor, the Iron Dome missile.

Tamir’s baseline design is well understood in the air defense community because it has been produced at scale and fired in real combat. It is an all-weather interceptor effective against short-range rockets, artillery, and mortars, with an engagement range of roughly 4 to 70 km. The missile uses electro-optical sensors and steering fins, and employs a proximity-fuzed blast warhead, a configuration that favors high-endgame agility and a forgiving lethal radius against small, fast targets. For IFPC, the operational prize is not simply importing Iron Dome as-is, but shaping a Tamir-derived round into a U.S. Army networked architecture where sensors, launchers, and fire control are distributed across the battlefield.

That architecture matters as much as raw missile kinematics. IFPC is meant to sit over forward operating bases, logistics hubs, airfields, ports, and command posts that have become magnets for long-range precision attack. A modern raid is rarely a single inbound track; it is a mixed stack of cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, decoys, and in some theaters, rockets or artillery fired as noise to complicate defense. The Army’s IFPC Inc 2 construct explicitly ties the system to protecting forward operating bases and critical infrastructure from UAS, cruise missiles, and RAM threats, and points to IBCS integration as the mechanism for fusing sensors and assigning shooters more efficiently under saturation conditions.

The development path to this moment also explains why the Army is widening the interceptor portfolio instead of betting on a single missile. IFPC’s roots go back two decades, but the current urgency was sharpened by congressional direction to deploy a medium-range air defense capability and the Army’s interim purchase of Iron Dome batteries, followed by integration difficulties that eventually pushed the service toward IFPC Increment 2 as the enduring solution. Enduring Shield moved forward, production contracting followed in late 2024, and the search for a second interceptor gained traction as the Army refined its cruise-missile problem set and recognized that the first missile choice would not cover every stressing flight profile.

So why invite an Israeli-derived solution into a U.S. Army competition instead of restricting the field to domestic primes? First, the Army is not choosing Israeli instead of American so much as it is running a deliberate horse race. Lockheed Martin publicly disclosed an OTA award in October 2025 to advance its own second-interceptor effort, underscoring that American industry remains central to the program. Rafael’s Phase 1 selection is best read as the Army hedging schedule and technical risk by drawing on a mature interceptor family with a large combat data set, while still compelling U.S. teams to deliver a missile tailored to supersonic, low-altitude cruise-missile defense.

Second, the industrial argument has quietly shifted in Rafael’s favor: the Tamir ecosystem is no longer foreign only. RTX and Rafael’s joint venture has opened a U.S. manufacturing site in East Camden, Arkansas, and received a major contract to produce Tamir and its U.S. variant SkyHunter, with SkyHunter described as a short- to medium-range weapon designed to counter threats including cruise missiles, aircraft, rockets, artillery, and mortars. That matters for U.S. security-of-supply, surge production, and congressional politics, as a missile built in the United States with American supply chain content is easier to scale when demand spikes.

The harder question is integration and assurance. The Army has previously flagged security concerns tied to integrating Iron Dome components into its broader architecture, even as other U.S. services have pursued Iron Dome-derived solutions without the same friction. RSGS’s emphasis on working closely with the SHIELD Project Office is a clue that Phase 1 is as much about proving cyber, data, and command-and-control compatibility as it is about interceptor flight performance.

What comes next will determine whether Rafael’s upgraded Tamir becomes a core IFPC magazine option or a stepping stone that forces competitors to sharpen their designs. Either way, the Army’s direction is clear. The mid-tier layer must be able to survive massed raids, defeat the fast and low cruise-missile problem, and do it with enough magazine depth and cost realism that commanders do not hesitate to defend the assets that keep U.S. formations in the fight.