Military planners will spend the next few years researching the early hours of April 14th in the skies above the Middle East. Iran’s attack on Israel, using waves of explosives-carrying drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, and the interception of nearly all of them by Israel’s air force and missile-defence systems, with considerable help from a multinational coalition co-ordinated by America, could give some valuable indications of how the wars of the future will be fought.

Iran has spent years developing the doctrine of using different types of long-range weapons to attack a target simultaneously. It was previously used by the Yemeni Houthi militia, which under Iranian guidance carried out attacks on the Saudis and Emiratis. More recently, it has been employed by Russia, which has purchased vast quantities of Iranian Shahed drones and used them against Ukraine, alongside its own domestically manufactured missiles.

But this was the first time the Iranian developers had fired their own arsenal and at such a large scale in one go—over 300 projectiles in a series of salvoes timed to hit targets within Israel just before 2am. According to a breakdown put out by the Israel Defence Forces, these included 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles. It was also the first time that such an attack was fended off by a multinational coalition using some of the most advanced missile-defence systems as well as fighter aircraft from several countries.

The coalition, co-ordinated by US Central Command, seems to have divided sectors among the different air forces (although most of the salvoes came from Iran, some were launched by Iranian-aligned militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen), with fighter jets shooting down drones and the missiles mainly intercepted by Israel’s Arrow and David’s Sling batteries, two sophisticated air-defence systems.

Of over 300 projectiles, only a handful seem to have made it through and the damage was minimal. One girl in southern Israel was wounded, most likely by shrapnel caused by a missile interception. Some damage was caused to a taxiway by a direct hit on an Israeli airbase, which remained operational.

There will be hope in the West that some of the knowledge gleaned from this clash can be used to improve Ukraine’s defences against a similar threat. The 21 European countries which are partners in the European Sky Shield Initiative, an alliance led by Germany which has already signed contracts to purchase Arrow batteries from Israel, will see in this proof of concept of their programme. But there are some caveats.

Israel has been building its multi-layered missile-defence system for decades to deal with such an eventuality. It will take other countries and coalitions years to put similar systems into use. Israel also had at least a week of warning after it became clear that Iran intended to retaliate after an Israeli air strike on its embassy compound in Damascus that killed seven Iranian officers, including a senior general. Future attacks will not come with such a long warning. And although Israel’s systems seem to have worked well, the high interception rate was also partly due to the co-operation and muscle of other countries.

Russia and Iran will also draw lessons from this episode. Israel came through it largely unscathed, but that may be of little comfort to any country or alliance facing similar threats.

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