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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."
It actually works!
How sure is that 90% hit rate? I wonder what it is about the other 10% that lets them through?
Too bad it still doesn't give them a reason NOT to kill Palestinian civilians. Oh well, they're just brown people anyway. Oops sorry, have to go back to my scheduling programming about the the latest Hollywood gossip
Does it really take so much computing power to calculate trajectory of a falling object? I know there's a lot of uncertainty coming from measurements but I don't really think you need anything more than an equivalent of pentium 100 to effectively decide wheter the missile is heading toward a populated area or not.
Anyone else thinking they should deploy it on the Gaza side too? Not instead (I know people will misread me). As well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/opinion/hamass-illegitimacy.html
Cuz shez a black magic woman !!
Made a devil out of me !!
You mean that SDI might work after all?
That will get us out of the nuclear age. A stop rate of 90% eliminates a first strike advantage.
But what's going to replace mutually assured destruction (MAD) when the destruction isn't assuredly mutual?
These missile shields could bring us closer to nuclear war, or end it forever when the party with the shield tells everyone else to drop their nukes or vanish in sparkly glowing fireballs.
The assault on the Gaza concentration camp is MURDER.
It's amazing, Israel has the wealth, the brains, and the resources to protect and defend its people with systems like this.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians have nothing, but to blindly lob rockets into a sovereign country.
This clearly illustrates to the world who is the civilized one, and who the savages are.
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.
... the innocent civilian refugees dying in Gaza from missiles that are accurate enough to hit one car yet somehow manage to strike crowded residential areas every single day don't have the money to buy one of those. Or eat.
When I was in Iraq at Balad AB they had a couple of CIWS operating on land to intercept rockets and mortars if they were heading towards developed areas on the base. In a twist there was also a few artillery tubes that could out several hundred pounds of HX on the launch point within about 20 seconds... but AFAIK they never used the counter fire capability (at least they didn't while I was there). The guys working on that stuff said the computing power wasn't all that impressive in the Mk-15 system.
Does this mean Israel will stop obliterating large swaths of palestine everytime someone so much as spits in their direction?
If they hadn't assassinated the head of the military wing of Hammas they wouldn't be facing this bombardment from Gaza. Ok he was probably behind a lot of the lower key attacks that have been going on recently, but it still might have worked out cheaper/better in the long run.
maybe a lot less or no missiles were fired, maybe the Iron Dome stats are twisted, an excuse to justify the cause.
with some sort of ground effort? Or at least attempt to disrupt the RADAR or missile sites. The other alternative is to get more explosives into Israeli controlled areas to employ as IED and such, though much of that society is trained to spot things that should not be. Will a rash of homicide bombers be unleashed?
Eventually they energy weapons might replace the missiles and provide even better coverage, but it might lead to an escalation that is harder to contain, by which I mean the other guys might employ chemical or biological weapons which cannot be intercepted.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
How's that Caliphate coming along, hey Muslims?
That's right -- because strong, rational cultures, like the West and Israel build wealth, power and military strength.
Religious cultures like Islam, squander human potential, and are doomed to wither and die.
I wonder what it is about the other 10% that lets them through?
How far do you manage to get in Missile Command? Do you 100% every level up to the 810,000 point, or do you rely on bonus cities?
Yet launching rockets at cities isn't? Iranian leadership should be tried for crimes against humanity. Iran can, most certainly, afford guidance systems in those rockets. an Ipad has enough sensors and processing power to be able to guide it at legitimate targets, and 20 dollars in servos to move guidance vanes would allow them to stop lobbing them at civilians. Oh wait...
Best missile defense shield : peace treaty.
This isn't the first time they've been used, they were talking about how well the Iron Dome system worked way back in April. If the failure rate was higher, as you claim, there'd be a lot more Israeli deaths. If it didn't work they wouldn't have rushed the latest battery into operation.
Seems to me turning Gaza into a parkling lot would be the cheapest approach in the long term.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_Rocket,_Artillery,_and_Mortar
in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4gYLq84yr8&feature=player_detailpage
One other large difference that the summary glosses over is that there's a big difference between the Katyusha and improvised rockets of Hamas, and the much larger Scud missile used by Iraq. There's almost an order of magnitude difference in size and range, and a several-fold difference in speed.
There's a correspondingly large difference between the Tamir interceptor missiles used as part of the Iron Dome and the Patriot missile.
Still, on the whole, it's probably a good thing that we are getting better at setting our lethal weapons against each other, rather than at people.
There was a huge problem with the Patriot system early on where the tracking computers lost so much accuracy even after only running continuously for 8 hours that the system would fail to intercept threats. The short term solution was to reboot the system at regular intervals.
GAO Report: Patriot Missile Defense (Official report)
Patriot Missile Software Problem
Round off errors and the Patriot missile
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
For being a 'tech' site, this sure seems to be full of bigots. This article is about a weapon which acts as a shield, yet everyone posts hatefully about those using it. If Israel were the 'bad guys' in this fight, how come Hamas is still there? If Hamas had sufficient firepower, Israel would be obliterated. Israel *has* sufficient firepower to obliterate Hamas, but instead they only strike back when struck (and don't forget; by 'struck', I mean people have been murdered).
Stop hating and just appreciate tech talked about in the article.
The real aim of Iron Dome is to be able to intercept Iranian missiles. Could this really be nothing more than a cynical operational systems test ahead of some Israeli adventurist stupidity elsewhere? The murder of Gazans being simply an Israeli pantomime to provoke enough rockets to make sufficient live targets for a meaningful operational test. After all, the rockets themselves cause little physical damage, unless you have to be unlucky enough for one of those things to actually land on you before it causes any substantial damage... I really wouldn't put it past them.
Let's pay the Russians 100 billion Euros to use one of their doomsday nukes to take out Jerusalem.
That eliminates one of the disputes between those people. When they bitch we tell them that "their God has deemed them bad and destroyed His Holy City and if they don't cut the shit, they'll be next. Now shake hands."
If they continue, we let those ridiculous piss-ant people's kill one another and the rest of World can eventually live without all this drama and horseshit. We then can concentrate on other assholes like the N. Korean leadership.
The Middle East went from being the cradle of Western civilization to its cancer. And cancers need to be nuked.
Holy crap, check this thing out!
Color me impressed...
Thus, in both a military and an economic sense, MIRVs render ABM systems less effective, as the costs of maintaining a workable defense against MIRVs would greatly increase, requiring multiple defensive missiles for each offensive one. Decoy reentry vehicles can be used alongside actual warheads to minimize the chances of the actual warheads being intercepted before they reach their targets. A system that destroys the missile earlier in its trajectory (before MIRV separation) is not affected by this but is more difficult, and thus more expensive to implement.
Even if you made an iron dome for ballistic nuclear warheads, who ever is firing them at you is just going to make them split right before they hit your interceptor kill zone. And then you'll have less time to act or deploy your interceptors and a random number at each entry point. Could you take out some of them? Sure but it's a clam shell game.
I'm pretty sure Hamas isn't using MIRV technology and the Israelis have developed this Iron Dome tech to stop this specific kind of attack. Not ICBMs with complex nuclear payloads.
My work here is dung.
Now the other side needs to start using guided missiles that pretend like they're going to miss, but switch targets at the last second.
So in other words, the other side needs to learn to robotech its missiles.
They have been fighting for about 2k years. Surely, it will be over soon.
rewriting history since 2109
Heavy-handed? Try showing restraint when your backyard is being targeted by rockets.
Israel stole land from the Palestinians. They then allowed their people to build "settlements" on other people's land.
And you're condemning those people for fighting back?!? And obsolving Israel of any blame and condoning their complete over reaction?!?
Israel has lost all sympathy from me.
And people like you are going to keep this shit going on and on and on.
Israel is just living with their own karma. Oh, well. Too fucking bad!
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?
If prayer actually worked then there would be no need for an Iron Dome.
The Patriot missiles were known to occassionally follow their target to *its* target.
Aside from just missing, another issue is that even if you hit the target, you need to make sure that your missile detonates when it makes contact with any part of the target.
Finally, detection isn't perfect, trajectories are approximations at the time of launch. The missile needs to adjust using information collected in-flight.
I remember how during the gulf war the patriot system was being lauded on news sites as being fantastically accurate, taking out most missiles before they landed, etc.
Only turned out later that it wasn't so accurate.
I'll give it a couple of years before I conclude whether the accuracy reported in the new system is just propaganda or not.
NY Times article has more information than the top link, e.g.: "Iron Dome has successfully intercepted more than 300 rockets fired at densely populated areas, with a success rate of 80 to 90 percent, top officials said."
So a bit lower percentage. Yet I'm skeptical of even that, because we have no independent verification, and officials are incented to cheerlead/bluff for things like this. Also note that it was about half paid for by the U.S. to the tune of about $900 million.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
But they can't make it too efficient. Otherwise it would be hard to justify killing hundreds of Palestinians by shelling and bombing residential areas.
...to Isreal, I think Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should cut off all land, sea and air crossings, build walls, install tunnel detectors and disable all Israeli power and water plants.
Occasionally storming with ground troops couldn't hurt. You need to find those radicals who oppose the seige.
When Isreal stops opposing the seige, then the seige will be lifted. But we have to be sure they don't stop temporarily, so the seige should probably end if Isreal stops opposing for a couple decades or so.
Fiscal Cliff my ass!
In May 2010, the White House announced that U.S. President Barack Obama would seek $205 million from U.S. Congress in his 2011 budget, to spur the production and deployment of additional Iron Dome batteries.
(...)
On 18 May 2012, the United States House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 4310, with $680 million for Iron Dome in Section 227. The report accompanying the bill, 112-479, also calls for technology sharing as well as co-production of Iron Dome in the United States in light of the nearly $900 million invested in the system since 2011.
Source: Wikipedia
So, when the interception rate gets high enough, I presume that the antagonists will shift to using huge numbers of smaller rockets. Either there will be too many inbound rockets to be intercepted, or they will be able to all be intercepted, but it will get hugely expensive at $100k for every rinky-dink rocket, or the Israelis will decide that, on a per-rocket basis, $100k is too much to spend based upon the marginal damage that inbound rocket would do, so they don't shoot it down, and then, based upon the number of rockets launched, they add up to significant damage.
Note, I'm not saying that the Israelis are wasting their time, or that their technology is stupid. To the contrary, I think it's pretty neat. But, it won't surprise me if their antagonists du-jur come up with some really cheap counter-measure.
Fifth battery was delivered to Tel-Aviv on Saturday. It saved our asses here.
Coverage is not hard as Israel is extremely small, for 100 percent coverage we'd need 13 batteries. but then again they're aiming for the center to south half of Israel (as far as their Iranian missile can reach), a big portion of the south is desert land which additionally reduces the area to be protected.
Iran is officially sending missiles to Gaza. Not being coy about it.
Iran is pitting the Palestinians against Israelis while gleefully rubbing their hands. It is a wonder how we haven't figured that they are the ones who should be punished.
That means they know exactly where it was launched from too.
Accurate automated retaliation next perhaps?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/condone
It's 40K USD per interceptor. If unsure, the system fires two consecutive interceptor missiles. Recently the level of confidence has increased and only one interceptor is fired in most cases.
overwhelm the system by launching many multiple rockets at the same time.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So they're almost finished then?
"goofy" rocket fuel
rather than a nice straight acceleration curve, "poison" the rocket fuel so it sputters and weakens in flight on purpose. Yes, the rocket won't be accurate, but I don't think accuracy is the point. Meanwhile, the goofy microaccelerations and microdecelerations would make the rocket impossible to target accurately.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=292706 though their policy is only to try and stop the ones on their way to populated areas, perhaps because it costs $100,000 to stop one
I'd say, as someone living in Israel (Tel Aviv, specifically) at the moment that its been quite effective on the longer range Fajr-5 Iranian-made missiles that had been fired my way. Another thing that might be changing the over all statistic is that there are two version of the system out at the moment- The older system which had started to roll out a year or two ago, along with a new generation of hardware. Perhaps the spokesman is only referring to the 'newer' upgraded versions.
...must be overjoyed at helping fund this.
Both proponents and opponents argued about high hits rates during the US Star Wars program. (Started by Reagan, but not yet over.) Proponents would claim even if just some lives would saved, it would be a success. Opponents would claim that if only one nuke got through, it would be a disastrous failure. I lean toward the former.
Rockets in general create a rather large thermal signature considering you're burning propellant - the hot exhaust is nice and bright on modern thermal imaging system. These types of detection systems are already in place on most modern jet fighters or aircraft like Air Force One to deploy AA missile counter measures automatically. Second, they're metal objects flying at a relatively low altitude, and probably have a very nice radar cross section for short wave radar.
An ICBM will be at a much higher altitude, and will become much smaller once the warhead(s) deploys. This will probably glow quite nicely on reentry, but will be traveling so fast intercepting it in a timely manner is much more difficult. Toss in the MIRVs and decoy systems already developed (of course the people designing this stuff 40 years ago considered decoys) and the challenge becomes much more difficult. You now have the inverse square of thermal radiation from the warhead working against you because of the distance. The temperature difference to the sky at the peak of the trajectory will be small, and when it finally starts to heat up from air friction, it will likely be too late. Short of using massive radar stations, it's a crap shoot at best.
I wonder what the result would be now if we would have a similar system which works against nukes given it to a smart AI which asked:
"Shall we play a game"
On OUR nickel, this "Buys Israel More Time ..." to oppress the Palestinians. Nothing quite so fun as shooting a captive populace with no standing army to defend them eh?
The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including; Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Eblaites, Ugarites, Canaanites, Phoenicians (including Carthaginians), Hebrews (Israelites, Judeans and Samaritans), Ahlamu, Arameans, Chaldeans, Amorites, Moabites, Edomites, Hyksos, Arabs, Nabateans, Maganites, Shebans, Sutu, Ubarites, Dilmunites, Bahranis, Maltese, Mandaeans, Sabians, Syriacs, Mhallami, Amalekites and Ethiopian Semites.
I get it, you are referring to people discriminating against Jews, it just annoys me that political correctness is actually causing more confusion.
Another example, calling black people African Americans. I have friends that are black that are not from Africa or America and take offense at being called an American.
Israel stole land from the Palestinians. They then allowed their people to build "settlements" on other people's land.
Israel completely withdrew from Gaza. But your argument would be wrong even if they didn't.
whatever.
In this situation Israel and Israel alone has the power to stop this. Period.
They won't and they don't have the will to do so.
Israel will be stuck in this pathetic conflict until their Savior arrives.
So, go ahead and tell folks they're wrong. Go ahead and defend Israel's actions. Go ahead and rationalize the treatment of the Palestinians.
Go ahead.
The Israelis are in the Hell they created. And in 2012 they have only themselves to blame.
Karma is a bitch, dude.
Two men enter, one man leaves!
Two men enter, one man leaves!
Strangely, it's more complicated than that. Isreal was attacked more than once by it's neighbours before 1967. It's not really unreasonable for them to want a buffer zone they control access to around their main populated region.
It's even MORE complicated than that....
Israel was created because of Europe's guilt over their anti-Semitism - and a great excuse to get the Jews out of their lands.
But there's a whole lot more.
But the thing is....Israel - and Israel alone- has the power to stop this. The US is their bitch (even with Obama) and Israel has the second greatest military might (second to their bitch) in the region. So what's the fucking problem?!?
Israel is now considered to be as bad as the Chinese (think Tibet). They can come back to being the "victim" that they so love to wallow in, and give the Palestinians their land and shove the fuck off.
But no! They won't do that.
Fuck'em I say.
The law of unintended consequences will come into play here. If hamas can't fire rockets or otherwise harm israel to get its point across what do you all think will happen next? I foresee suicide bombings all over israel as that is their last possible act of desperation and losing. Sad but true just look at what happened at Iraq and Afghanistan when we though we where winning....
Lookout for next wave of attacks it won't be rockets.
Bleeding-edge military technology performs much better than 30-year-old military technology. Story at 11. /sigh
And FU to all those that called the defense plans "star wars" and that it wouldn't work.
Intercepting the V2 rocket was impossible - waaayyyy too fast, but there weren't nearly as many V2s as there were V1s.
Intercepting a V1 wasn't as hard, that thing flew like an airplane, basically. It could be intercepted by using height - dive down using altitude to make the intercepting airplane faster, because otherwise it would have had problems catching the pretty fast V1.
V1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb
V2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2
I do not trust the "semitic" information one iota more than the "antisemitic" kind.
You need a different adjective. Both sides in this conflict are Semitic.
From dictionary.com:
Semitic
a subfamily of Afroasiatic languages that includes Akkadian, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, hebrew, and Phoenician.
Considering the fact that the Palestinian rockets have the level of sophistication of technology typically found in an average machine shop, it's good that a multi-billion dollar defense system is actually able to defend against them.
Ain't religion great?
Cetero censeo civitates Palestinenses delendas esse. Usque ad ultimam.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
SDI also included space based lasers (obstructed and distorted by cloud and atmospherics) ...
I believe the space based lasers were supposed to hit intercontinental ballistic missiles when they left the atmosphere. The upper part of such a missile's parabolic trajectory is beyond the atmosphere.
I have little love for Israel.
You can also look up "anti-Semitic" in dictionary.com or any other standard reference and see that in the word specifically denotes hostility or hatred of Jews. A lot of people are genuinely confused by this terminology, ...
In particular you and the GGP. The palestinian terrorist and murderer of Israeli civilians Yasser Arafat famous corrected someone who tried to label him an anti-semite, pointing out that Palestinians are also semites.
... but you can be pretty sure that when someone argues that "anti-Seimtism" is a meaningless term, ...
Straw man. The GP did not do so, all he said was that the wrong adjective was used. That fact remains that palestinians consider themselves semites.
... even after having been shown a the dictionary definition and history of the term, it is pretty good evidence that he or she is an anti-Semite.
Obviously someone who points out that palestinians are also semites must be a nazi. Your logic is breathtaking ... as in people are laughing at you so hard that they can not breathe.
I have no doubt that most of the powers-that-be know where the missiles are from and who's generally responsible, but by the same time, right now one could look at the situation that there are multiple players that Islamic Jihad could get their missiles from, and stopping Iran from providing relatively unsophisticated missiles won't stop the militants from lobbing explosives into Israel, and also right now the weapons are unsophisticated enough to make defense fairly practical and to make damage fairly small. Escalating by attacking other countries in the region could result in more sophisticated missiles or in ground war.
At the moment the material cost and the cost in lives is fairly small, and steps to address it on multiple fronts are being tried. If other efforts fail then perhaps there could be an escalation to a more active war, but for the moment I'd rather they try other methods first.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You can also look up "anti-Semitic" in dictionary.com or any other standard reference and see that in the word specifically denotes hostility or hatred of Jews. A lot of people are genuinely confused by this terminology, ...
In particular you and the GGP. The palestinian terrorist and murderer of Israeli civilians Yasser Arafat famous corrected someone who tried to label him an anti-semite, pointing out that Palestinians are also semites.
I would say you're the one confused on this. "Semitic" covers a broader range of peoples
... but you can be pretty sure that when someone argues that "anti-Seimtism" is a meaningless term, ...
Straw man. The GP did not do so, all he said was that the wrong adjective was used. That fact remains that palestinians consider themselves semites.
Reading isn't your strong suit, and I know perfectly well what "Semite" and "anti-Semite" mean. Nor have I said GP (now GGP) has said anything different.
... even after having been shown a the dictionary definition and history of the term, it is pretty good evidence that he or she is an anti-Semite.
To which you just provided an example, namely Arafat.
Obviously someone who points out that palestinians are also semites must be a nazi. Your logic is breathtaking ... as in people are laughing at you so hard that they can not breathe.
Not my logic. When you get a break from laughing out loud and take a breath, go back and re-read your post.
A laser would seem to be better suited for an interceptor device. CO2-based lasers are quite powerful. Why are still not used for defense?
It's just intercepted more missiles in the last week then the previous 2 years combine. Since there are only 4 Iron Dome Batteries operational, with a 5th that just came on line 11/17/2012, and 2 more scheduled for 2013, I always thought Hamas could overwhelm Iron Dome. It seems Hamas has tried that but Israel UAV's have been able to spot these attempts and that's where the IAF comes in. They are able to use their Air Power to bomb these attempts before any missiles are launched. Each Iron Dome Battery cost around $37million US Dollars with the Tamir missiles around $40,000 each. I feel this has just been a test by Hamas to see the capabilities of Iron Dome. They probably realized they lost this round days ago but are unable to stop now without loosing face. (A very important point in the Arab world.) A truce will be worked out and Hamas will re-evaluate where they must be in 2, 5, 10 years from now before they can attempt a successful attack. Of course Israel won't sit still during that time. All just very, very sad.
n/t
Reading isn't your strong suit, and I know perfectly well what "Semite" and "anti-Semite" mean. Nor have I said GP (now GGP) has said anything different.
Or perhaps writing is not your strong suit. Your post absolutely gave the impression that you were disagreeing with the previous post and suggesting that it was racist.
To which you just provided an example, namely Arafat.
Arafat described himself as being anti-zionist, claiming that as a semite himself his is not anti-semite. One could also reasonably describe him as anti-Israeli or anti-jewish. You are hanging your argument on an obviously flawed definition, a definition that embeds a certain amount of imprecision into itself. When using the word in the context of a European or a Persian then the imprecision is somewhat tolerable, but unworkable in the context of a fellow semitic.
i hope they're not using Siemens PLCs in this Iron Dome thing.
If you want an excuse to wipe out the walled ghetto of Palestine, then all you need to do is make sure you endlessly torment the target population enough so that these kinds of population-impressing but toothless attacks are forthcoming, (hell, if provoking and arming through third parties some useful idiots on the other side of the wall isn't working well enough, why not just send in some Mossad agents to launch the missiles themselves? It's got "Jewish Mentality" written all over it.)
Gotta keep the fireworks display going in order to justify the psychopathic destruction of Palestine.
Of course they say it works, even if it doesn't it could lead to less rockets being fired at them.
Just like the British reports of bomb damage in WW2.
I doubt this system works as claimed. The numbers in various articles quote different percentage success rates. And then they say it will only fire when the system determines if the targetted area is populated. Sounds like this is a tactic to inflate success numbers when really it fails to operate. Further, these are largely funded with the help of US funds and yet the US has no information about the technology. What is this? This all just sounds like a PR mechanism designed to garner more funding. Ill believe it when it is tested by multiple countries... until then, Ill remember that there is a war going on and news from the front is often propiganda.
There were 250,000 people in Gaza in 1969 and 1.5 Million today. It's pretty obvious they don't want to murder everyone in Gaza .
WMDs today aren't really nukes. There are genetic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, psytronic weapons, cybernetic weapons, laser weapons, all which are more dangerous than nuke and all paradigm shifting.
Nukes were state of the art in the 1940s-50s. It's 2012 and now the weapons are like nukes only invisible or so secret people don't know what they are to recognize whether or not it's being used. Russia has a zombie-gun weapon now for which there are no defenses against. Let's also not rule out lasers and other space weapons which could defeat a lot of these so called missile defense systems with ease. We have to worry about clone armies, cybernetic warfare, and other exotic weapons. Fortunately Iran doesn't have these weapons yet but I do think they have a satellite in space and probably are smart enough to figure out how to put weapons into space or just a guidance system from space. Missile defense systems wont work in an actual war, it will take more but that is my opinion and I don't know what different governments have I only know it wont work against China, Russia or Iran.
Nuclear attacks aren't actually very useful in war. They destroy everything, not just the enemy. The best weapons in war destroy infrastructure while not taking out much else. An EMP type of bomb would be more damaging than a nuke even though a nuke would take more lives because EMP would destroy electronic equipment and infrastructure but not to the point that the enemy couldn't take the territory and use it.
0. I did not say that Israel wasn't war-torn. However, it would be rather ridiculous to compare the level of devastation to that of Gaza.
And you somehow think that Hamas didn't know that before it attacked. In a way, you're far worse than the Israeli. The Israeli know they are dealing with adults capable of thinking this through, and they respond accordingly. You, on the other hand, think these people are children that can't think for themselves, that somehow don't realize that they're starting a war.
1. The stronger, richer party ALWAYS have a far bigger responsibility.
That's just stupid. So if you do anything to make the life of a street beggar (plenty of those in America) less than ideal, you can be blamed for that ? You are certainly the richer, stronger party and you could do something. And of course, the mere fact that they exist, and that you're richer is proof that you're "holding them down", right ?
This is a moronic way to think about the world.
2. And how about NOT slowly invading your neighbours? Could that perhaps cool stuff down?
3. So you mean that the Jews have a right to live and need for more room. I recognize that reasoning. Now who was it that said that? Can't remember? Anyway, I think he called it "Lebensraum", or something to that effect. Probably was a nice guy, too.
He did not say that. He only said he wanted to keep what they have, where he has lived since he was born. Which I believe translates to the Allied position, not the Axis one.
But wait ! I know ! Let's make people leave areas they have conquered ... of course ... muslims conquered palestine too (and Jews didn't, read up on history, they actually bought it). For that matter Europeans conquered Europe, Americans conquered America, ... so let's force all muslims into the tiny town they originate from, and let's move the entirety of Europe into Mongolia ! Because that "is more fair".
Sounds stupid, doesn't it ? That's because it is stupid.
4.
Why can't the Palestinians go live in some other part of the Muslim world? 1.2 billion of them and they can't find homes? Jews want a homeland too, and Israel is ours. They have enough fucking countries of their own. It's not our fault if none of them can put together a decent economy or political structure. Saudi Arabia has plenty of space, and the government there gets just as much support from the US as we do.
Muslims just want the Palestinians to suffer so they have someone to claim they are fighting for when they blow up towers in New York.
Have nothing to say about this, really. Just wanted to repeat it because it is so incredibly stupid and uninsightful. :-)
It's also true. The vast, vast majority of Palestinians are immigrants (this is beyond obvious if you visit one of their towns. Btw, do that. Not at night, and not in Gaza though. You might develop an informed opinion). Egypt, not Israel, closes off the border, and not due to Israeli pressure. Saudi arabia regularly uses Gaza and the westbank to dump refugees arriving on their shores (ever wonder why a country that lies less than 100 km from Africa seems to receive exactly zero refugees from Africa when Italy, 400 km away from the nearest shore, receives over 1000 monthly ?)
Also, Palestine receives > $1000 per head in foreign aid per month, close to $3.5 billion per year, from the West alone (and I'm sure Saudi Arabia matches that). They receive this because of their wars, their terrorism, their attacks, because of the rockets, and because the muslim-everyone else conflicts they constantly cause. That is their economy, that is their o
I'm really sick of hearing this shit. Why don't they just obliterate each other already and we can all go on with our lives. I wish some aliens would just step in an nuke the entire region to make it uninhabitable. No one gets the land and no ones to blame. Everyone is happy. I'm tired of hearing this Isreal vs Palastine shit.