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Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works
Hugh Pickens writes "Sarah Tory reports that the debut of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense shield has added a new element to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, one that military officials are calling a 'game-changer.' Israeli officials are claiming that the shield is destroying 90 percent of missiles and rockets it aims at that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas. This level of success is unprecedented compared with older missile defense systems such as the American-made Patriot model used during the 1991 Gulf War. The missile-defense system can detect rocket launches and then determine the projectiles' flight paths and only intercepts rocket or artillery shells if they are headed for populated areas or sensitive targets; the others it allows to land. It takes a lot of raw computing power to rapidly build a ballistic profile of a fast-incoming projectile, make a series of quick decisions concerning potential lethality, and launch a countermeasure capable of intercepting said projectile in-flight. One reason Iron Dome is showing a much more robust capability than the Patriot system did is simply that its battle control hardware and software are several generations more advanced than those early interceptor systems. 'Israeli officials point out that Iron Dome saves money despite the fact that the interceptors cost up to $100,000 each,' writes Tory. 'The cost of rebuilding a neighborhood destroyed by a rocket attack — not to mention people wounded and lives lost — would be far greater than the cost of the interceptor.' Most important, the system buys Israel time, allowing it to plan out an appropriate response without the political pressure that would be generated by hundreds of potential deaths."
I'm not saying Israel's defenses don't work (I've no reason to think that) but given the timing do you think we'd be told
a) If the defenses didn't work well at all
or
b) About all the instances the defenses failed to work?
Given the circumstances what we hear *especially* from official sources on either side of this conflict should be taken with quite a grain of salt.
You need to 1) detect the launch 2) determine the trajectory 3) determine the speed 4) determine a few other factors (mass? range? payload? whether it's capable of changing trajectory mid-flight?) 5) calculate where it's going 6) determine if that counts as a populated area 7) fill in any missing variables 8) make a decision 9) direct the defense
How fast could you do this? What if there's a hundred rockets coming in at once? It's not like a dumb bomb that's dropped straight down on a given point.
So the Palestinians launch missiles at Isreal and you are upset that Isreal is pissed off about it and launches counter attacks? If Canada started launching rockets at the US, I would expect us to invade and conquer them in short order.
Well, if the US sent their military into Vancouver for "security" reasons, throwing out all the Canadians who lived there and allowed US citizens to build homes and "settle" the area and considering the US's superior military, I wouldn't blame Canada in the least for shooting rockets over the border.
I'm surprised that Palestine has been allowed to exist as long as it has.
You are either an excellent and crafty anti-Israel troll or an incredibly ill-informed person.
Reading the comments, it seems I'm the only one here who thinks this is awesome. When it comes to weapons development, this is exactly the sort of weapon we should be cheering for. Whether you agree with the ones using it or not, this is a wonderful thing. A weapon which only works as a shield to block incoming attacks; that is what the weapons used by enlightened countries should have evolved into.
Here's a random question for some knowledgeable person: how much of that $100,000 cost per interceptor is overhead? I realize that missiles aren't simple things, but that strikes me as way out of line with what it would actually cost to build one of these.
That goes for other missiles as well - you always hear about Tomahawks, etc., costing $1 million+, how much do they actually cost to build?
Actually, it's more complicated than that, and that's the reason that the defense system was considered 'provocative'. It's also the reason the US and USSR arsenals were so 'over the top'.
(I read a book by someone involved with the so called 'nuclear calculus' of MAD a few years ago and assuming he wasn't lying through his teeth, it's interesting)
Let's say you want to nuke, say, Perth in Australia and remove it from the map. Without using the really really big ones, which were never deployed much really, you are talking about 6-10 mid 80s grade warheads. Let's say 10.
Now if you want to land 10 warheads on Perth, in the mid 80s, you need to plan to launch 18-25 or so at it.
The book went into the details of why.
Now because of some of those details, let's say that Australia deployed an ABM system that can stop 33% of the warheads that complete their ascent stage and separate from their missiles. We're not talking about shooting down the missiles themselves, just the warheads after they separate. (Interesting note, as of 80s grade tech, boosted fission weapons were fully 'fail deadly' and could detonate at full yield when struck by an interceptor weapon, before that weapon could destroy the hardware. Full Fusion weapons would probably 'fizzle' producing a much lower yield explosion than they were rated for.)
Based on his math, which was complex but did follow, assuming the underlying assumptions were correct, in order to turn Perth into a crater you now need to launch 60-80 warheads at it.
To get a 'for sure' 10 warhead kill.
Now when MIRVs were in style that doesn't seem like so much with a dozen warheads on each missile except that an iron clad rule was that those warheads each had to come off a separate missile. Because a lot of the reason for needing so many warheads was the assumption that a good percentage of those missiles carrying them would never make it to separation stage.
Add to this the fratacide problem of warheads. Any warhead hitting Perth within 'a short time (which he couldn't give exacts of because it was classified, but indicated it was longer than 3-4 minutes)' of any particular detonation would be killed by it's own brother explosion before it detonated. (And nuclear detonation waves were one of the few things fast enough to kill, for example, a boosted fission weapon before it could set itself off). So if you launched 60 warheads at Perth, not only do they all have to come from different missiles, but you have to plan for them to land over a at least a 4 hour period. Which allows the ABM system to be more effective because you can't swamp it with everything you have in one big go and, assuming Australia has deployed it's own nuclear weapons, also allows them to strike back at your missile launching fields and command and control facilities. Which means you need to target even MORE warheads at Perth if you want to evaporate it.
The Big Deal here is not that 'oh heck we may only lose half our country in a nuclear war woopie!'
The Big Provocative Deal here is that once you have that 33% kill shield in place it requires a massive expenditure of warheads on the enemies part to really for sure kill you completely. Suddenly things are not MAD and now you have to worry about 33% shield country launching conventional ground invasions of parts of your territories or spheres of influence, feeling more sure that you won't escalate the conflict to the nuclear stage because suddenly you can't ensure the destruction of the other side, when they still have the ability to annihilate you.
Now you may ask who would be insane enough to risk that nuclear war that wipes out only half their own country, given the rest of the situation, and my answer would Godwin the thread. Also, the USSR thought Reagan was that far off the rails as well. Who's to say who else would have risked such a level of brinksmanship.
90% would be enough for a country to act pretty much with impunity against anyone except the really big nuclear players, without fear of major nuclear damage. The thought