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Israel faces a looming shortage of interceptor missiles as it shores up air defences to protect the country from attacks by Iran and its proxies, according to industry executives, former military officials and analysts.

The US is racing to help close gaps in Israel’s protective shield, announcing on Sunday the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) antimissile battery, ahead of an expected retaliatory strike from Israel on Iran that risks further regional escalation.

“Israel’s munitions issue is serious,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior US defence official with responsibility for the Middle East.

“If Iran responds to an Israel attack [with a massive air strike campaign], and Hizbollah joins in too, Israel air defences will be stretched,” she said, adding that US stockpiles were not limitless. “The US can’t continue supplying Ukraine and Israel at the same pace. We are reaching a tipping point.”

Boaz Levy, chief executive of Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned company which makes the Arrow interceptors used to shoot down ballistic missiles, said he was running triple shifts to keep production lines running.

“Some of our lines are working 24 hours, seven days a week. Our goal is to meet all our obligations,” Levy said, adding that the time required to produce interceptor missiles was “not a matter of days”. While Israel does not disclose the size of its stockpiles, he added: “It is no secret that we need to replenish stocks.”

Israel’s triple-layered air defences have so far shot down the vast bulk of incoming drones and missiles fired by Iran and its proxies at the state from across the region.

The country’s Iron Dome system has shot down short-range rockets and drones fired by Hamas from Gaza, while David’s Sling has intercepted heavier rockets fired from Lebanon, and the Arrow system has blocked ballistic missiles from Iran. Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iraqi militias have also fired missiles, rockets and drones at Israel.

The Israeli military claimed in April that, with the help of the US and other allies, it achieved a 99 per cent interception rate against an Iranian salvo of 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles.

But Israel had less success fending off a second Iranian barrage of over 180 ballistic missiles fired on October 1. Almost three dozen missiles hit Israel’s Nevatim air base, according to open source intelligence analysts, while one missile exploded 700 metres away from the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

The US-supplied Thaad battery, which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles, will sit alongside Israel’s Arrow system. It bolsters Israel’s overall air defences as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government plans its retaliatory strike for Iran’s missile barrage in October, which Tehran said was to avenge the killing of the leaders of the Hamas and Hizbollah militant groups.

Lebanon-based Hizbollah has shown it can still strike at least 60km into Israel despite weeks of Israeli attacks on its commanders and its arsenal.

On Sunday, a Hizbollah attack drone killed four Israeli soldiers at a military base in the centre of the country.

“We are not seeing Hizbollah’s full capability yet. It has only been firing at around a tenth of its estimated prewar launching capacity, a few hundred rockets a day instead of as many as 2,000,” said Assaf Orion, a former Israeli brigadier general and head of strategy at the Israel Defense Forces.

“Some of that gap is a choice by Hizbollah not to go full out, and some of it is due to degradation by the IDF . . . But Hizbollah has enough left to mount a strong operation,” Orion added. “Haifa and northern Israel are still on the receiving end of rocket and drone attacks almost every day.”

Analysts said that defence planners and Israel’s AI-powered air defences were having to choose which areas to protect over others.

More than 20,000 rockets and missiles have been fired at Israel over the past year from Gaza and Lebanon alone, according to official Israeli figures.

“During the October 1 attack, there was a sense the IDF reserved some Arrow interceptors in case Iran fired its next salvo at Tel Aviv,” said Ehud Eilam, a former researcher at Israel’s Ministry of Defence. “It’s only a matter of time before Israel starts to run out of interceptors and has to prioritise how they are deployed.”

Illustration by Ian Bott and cartography by Jana Tauschinski

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Private equity groups TPG and Blackstone have teamed up to work on a joint bid for eyecare company Bausch + Lomb, according to people familiar with the matter. 

If it goes through, the deal could be one of the largest private equity buyouts of the year, with Bausch Lomb’s enterprise value including debt totalling $11.5bn as of market close on Friday. Several other private equity funds assessing bids have dropped out of the process.

Bausch + Lomb was put up for sale to resolve an impasse over a separation from its heavily indebted parent company.

TPG and Blackstone have long been considered the frontrunners to take the business private, as before Bausch + Lomb publicly listed in 2022 the private equity groups had expressed interest in buying the business, the people added. TPG already owns ophthalmology company BVI Medical.

People familiar with the bidding said offers were expected to value the company at an enterprise value of between $13bn and $14bn, or up to $25 per share.

Bausch + Lomb shares closed 7.2 per cent higher in New York on Monday following the Financial Times’ report of the potential private equity takeover. The group’s share price finished 0.6 per cent shy of its July 2023 peak and is now up by more than one-third in value since the FT reported last month that the eyecare group had kicked off a sale process led by advisers at Goldman Sachs.

The dealmaking effort is an attempt to resolve a feud between shareholders and creditors of Bausch Lomb’s parent company Bausch Health, which owns 88 per cent of the company. Bausch Lomb’s chief executive and chair is famed dealmaker Brent Saunders, who sold Allergan to AbbVie for $63bn in 2020.

Formal bids are expected by as early as the end of the month. However, it was still possible that a deal may not occur, the people said.

Blackstone, TPG and Bausch + Lomb declined to comment. Goldman did not immediately respond.

A spin-off process ground to a halt, as losing its more profitable subsidiary threatened to leave Bausch Health insolvent because of a $21bn debt pile, and was opposed by lenders, including Apollo Management, Elliott Management, GoldenTree Asset Management and Silver Point Capital.

Bonds in Bausch Health have also traded strongly, as a sale would allow the company, formerly known as Valeant, to pay down its debts. 

Bausch Health has about $10bn worth of maturities coming due before the end of 2027 — with the highest priority being a $2.4bn fixed-rate loan due next year. How Bausch Health’s key shareholders — including Wall Street titans Carl Icahn and John Paulson — would spend the proceeds of the sale is unclear. But one idea under discussion is to pay themselves a special dividend after paying down the near-term debt, according to two people. But this move would be likely to rankle creditors. 

Representatives for Icahn declined to comment, while Paulson & Co did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bausch + Lomb is projected to generate nearly $860mn in adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation from $4.7bn in revenues this year, nearly three-fifths of which comes from sales of contact lenses and dry eye drugs Xiidra and Miebo. The company also sells surgical equipment to ophthalmologists.

Doubts over Bausch Health’s performance and solvency have been added to by its lead drug Xifaxan, a gastrointestinal medication, coming off patent by 2029. Bausch Health’s market value has risen by nearly 26 per cent to just under $2.9bn since the sale process was first reported but remains well below its value before the company faced legal challenges over its Xifaxan patents.

Lilly Ledbetter, a women’s equality activist whose fight for pay equity led to passage of the monumental Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, died Saturday. She was 86.

Ledbetter’s death was confirmed on Monday by Jodi Solomon, her speaking manager.

“She was fierce, she was a crusader and just a really good friend. She will be missed a lot,” Solomon told NPR.

Born in Jacksonville, Ala., Ledbetter was hired as a supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., in 1979. Years later, she discovered through an anonymous note left in her mailbox that she was receiving less pay than her male co-workers who worked the same position.

“When I saw that, it took my breath away. I felt humiliated. I felt degraded,” Ledbetter recalled in an interview with NPR in 2009. “I had to sort of get my composure back to go ahead to perform my job and then, the first day off, I went to Birmingham, Ala., and filed a charge with the EEOC.”

That action in 1998 was the beginning of a 10-year legal fight for Ledbetter toward equity.

She retired from Goodyear 11 months after she found out about the pay disparity and filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the company in 1999. She won the suit in 2003 and was awarded more than $3 million, but the amount was reduced to $300,000 because of a statutory cap and $60,000 in back pay. Goodyear appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that Ledbetter could only win damages or back pay for the 180 days prior to the filing of her claim. In 2007, the high court agreed in a 5-4 ruling.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Ledbetter’s case is “not time barred” and wrote the issue “is in Congress’ court.”

Less than two years later, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and allows workers to “obtain relief, including recovery of back pay, for up to two years preceding the filing of the charge.” Then-President Barack Obama signed the measure into law on Jan. 29, 2009, the first bill he signed as president.

Obama paid a tribute to Ledbetter in a statement on Sunday.

“Lilly Ledbetter never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work,” he wrote. “Lilly did what so many Americans before her have done: setting her sights high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren. Michelle and I are grateful for her advocacy and her friendship, and we send our love and prayers to her family and everyone who is continuing the fight that she began.”

Ledbetter has been recognized for her advocacy on pay equity and her story continues to resonate.

Last week, Ledbetter was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from Advertising Week for her activism on Equal Pay. Lilly, a movie based on Ledbetter’s life, is being shown at screenings across the country.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg contributed to this report.