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A Skeptical View of Israel's Iron Dome Rocket Defense System
Lasrick (2629253) writes It isn't as if real analysis of Israel's "Iron Dome" isn't available, but invariably, whenever Israel has a skirmish the media is filled with glowing reports of how well the system works, and we always find out months later that the numbers were exaggerated. John Mecklin at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists looks at the coverage of Iron Dome in the recent exchanges between Israel and Hamas and finds the pattern is repeating itself. However, 'Ted Postol, an MIT-based missile defense expert and frequent Bulletin contributor, provided a dose of context to the Iron Dome coverage in a National Public Radio interview Wednesday. "We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all,"' Includes a good explanation of the differences between Iron Dome (a 'rocket defense system') and missile defense systems pushed by the U.S.
This post (like the one with the Brazuca for the World Cup) is certainly subject bait. It works because it attracts lots of tangentially on topic comments but that doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter of the article.
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So please, don't fall for it. Don't spend the whole comment section arguing about causes and consequences of the conflict, who started it, who deserves is, etc.
Stay on topic and discuss the technical aspects of the missile system, at least that is what should be discussed here.
On bizarro world Slashdot, maybe
It's difficult to find a technological solution to a combination of relatively minor disagreements as to the exact details of the God of Abraham, plus disagreement over land ownership.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
You don't expect a critical appraisal from the vendor, do you? Take his, and everyone else's reporting with some degree of skepticism.
One notable fact that was tangentially mentioned is that one doesn't see any 'hits' in the media. I would think one would be able to see the effect of the missile intercepting the targets at least some of the time. Given the intense media coverage, one wonders. It's certainly possible that by the time the interceptor hits the target it's too small to visual, but there is one hell of a lot of energy involved. Kinetic energy often creates sparkly bits that can be seen.
It is also hard to argue that this ISN'T just one more aspect of the public relations game that is endemic to this conflict. Both sides (as is pointed out in TFA) engage in trying to get the other side to look mean and nasty. It's way more complicated than that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They do that occasionally, and are universally condemned for it. Remember Israel is not allowed to defend itself. They have to just accept 100's or rockets a day lobbed at them and not react. If they do fire back, and go as far as to warn the targets, Hamas gathers their children and brings them to the target creating mini-martyr's and generating huge sympathy, especially from the west.
They have a standing offer: it Hamas stops the rockets, they stop theirs. Not difficult, unless your Hamas
It's not defense, it's a rampage. Almost a genocide.
You should remember that Israel (which have one of the best armies in the world) is fighting against a ethnical group without army.
If anyone else in the world did that, We could call it a massacre, a butchery or even a genocide.
seriously, this is just bullshit on par with fox news.
"We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all," Postol said. "It—my guess is maybe [it hits a targeted missile] 5 percent of the time—could be even lower. ... And when you look—what you can do in the daytime—you can see the smoky contrail of each Iron Dome interceptor, and you can see the Iron Domes trying to intercept the artillery rockets side on and from behind. In those geometries, the Iron Dome has no chance, for all practical purposes, of destroying the artillery rocket."
"for sure," really? how about some actual numbers instead of speculation?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Palestinians have an army...
Not regular army but a terrorism/guerilla kind of army...
If you count the prices of the missiles launched at Israel, you'd have enough to get food to most of the Palestinians, to repair most of the buildings, to create medic centers, schools, ...
And they prefer to create martyrs than go to a safe place when Israelian raids come... They want to get the whole world destroying Israel... They want to use US against Israel...
They prefer to choose war, to kill the Jews that are thought about as worse than dogs by the Muslims. Quran and other clearly say "you may not trust a non-muslim"... If you're Christian, better be warned, we are the next target on the list... well, maybe after agnostics...
Yeah. And now South Africa has gone from being a nuclear power with a space program to a third world shit hole that's mostly known for it's murder rate. I don't think history is going to be very kind to the Enlightened(TM), either.
See Desmond Tutu's comments.
According to yourself, you value an personal ancestral connection to the land. And you also said you think it's the same for Hamas. So please don't try to twist things into a "good vs. evil" or even "sane vs. insane" narrative. It's not.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There's really nowhere else to put this, so here goes:
Thank you dotancohen for all your comments. They are insightful, mature, and, perhaps most importantly, civil.
As a general on the discussion so far, I find it informative that the most vitriolic comments directed against Israel and Jews were posted anonymously; the posters are well aware that their remarks are defamatory and have no appropriate place in civil discourse.
Per the preceding discussion, the staggeringly different perspectives on life, the afterlife, martydom, etc. add a dimension to the conflict that is not easily resolved. As the product of a "modern", western civilation and education, I personally find it impossible to subscribe to any sort of notion of the promise of heaven, nor do I have any willingness to sacrifice myself for a religious cause. The asymmetric philosophy that enables suicide bombings, among other atrocities, has had an outsized influence on the conflict and global perception thereof.
Mark it as flamebait all you want:
"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." - Golda Meir
Actually, the key thing for them is "cheap". They need to keep costing sub-$1k missiles in the ballpark of these Iron dome systems - the more, the better. They might as well just omit the warheads to save money and increase range. Every $50k shot Israel fires with those systems costs 25 Israelis' annual tax contribution to the IDF. Every $55m system they deploy costs 27.500 Israelis' IDF tax contributions.
Palestinians are poor, but they're not *that* poor that they can't leverage those kind of lopsided financial ratios.
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
On some other planet where the IDF isn't wiping out 100 Palestinians for every dead Israeli? Where the United States doesn't praise every cluster bomb dropped on Gaza as Israel "defending itself"? Where the Palestinians are on of the world's top military powers and the Zionists are a bunch of unarmed refugees?
Just another day in this alternate reality built on bald-faced lies you guys have constructed for yourselves....