Israel for the first time used a seaborne missile defence system to shoot down a drone approaching from the Red Sea that had set off sirens in the port city of Eilat, the military said on Tuesday.

Eilat has been a frequent target for launches by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen as a show of support for Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules Gaza and is also backed by Iran.

Israel positioned missile boats in the Red Sea after the start of the war in Gaza, the military said. One of those missile boats shot down the drone with the new system called the C-Dome.

"Overnight, for the first time ever, an IDF Sa'ar 6-class corvette missile ship successfully intercepted a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat," the military said.

The C-Dome is the naval version of the Iron Dome, Israel’s rocket-defense system that has intercepted thousands of rockets fired from Gaza. The Iron Dome, which has been active since 2011 with an impressive success rate of approximately 90 percent, works by using radars to detect short-range rockets before destroying them with its own missiles.

The C-Dome was first unveiled in 2014 and was declared operational in November 2022. It works similarly to the Iron Dome, using some of the same technology, except that it is mounted on ships.

It bookends Israel's multi-tier air defence array opposite Arrow-3, which is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere.