Just after 2:00 a.m., the calm of central Israel shattered as air-raid sirens wailed across the Tel Aviv region. Military early-warning radars had just detected an unusually fast launch rising from western Iran—its trajectory climbing sharply into the upper atmosphere before turning toward Israel at blistering speed.

Inside Israeli air-defense command centers, alarms flashed almost instantly. Operators from the long-range Arrow missile defense system batteries raced to calculate the incoming trajectory while crews from the mid-layer David’s Sling system prepared their interceptors. The two systems form key layers of Israel’s multi-tier missile shield, designed to stop ballistic threats before they can reach populated areas.

But this launch appeared different.

Israeli tracking stations reported the missile performing abrupt altitude shifts as it neared the final phase of its flight. Defense officials believe the projectile was likely the Iranian Fattah hypersonic missile, a weapon unveiled by Tehran in 2023 that reportedly travels at speeds up to Mach 13–15 and can execute unpredictable manoeuvres during its terminal descent.

Such movements can complicate interception calculations. Ballistic-missile defenses normally predict a target’s path using its earlier trajectory, but a missile that suddenly changes direction forces operators to recompute the intercept window in seconds.