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MIT's Ted Postol Presents More Evidence On Iron Dome Failures
Lasrick (2629253) writes In a controversial article last week, MIT physicist Ted Postol again questioned whether Israel's vaunted Iron Dome rocket defense system actually works. This week, he comes back with evidence in the form of diagrams, photos of Iron Dome intercepts and contrails, and evidence on the ground to show that Iron Dome in fact is effective only about 5% of the time. Postol believes the real reason there are so few Israeli casualties is that Hamas rockets have very small warheads (only 10 to 20 pounds), and also Israel's outstanding civil defense system, which includes a vast system of shelters and an incredibly sophisticated rocket attack warning system (delivered through smart phones, among other ways).
TFA is very interesting & I'm smarter for having read it...
I'm glad people are looking at this kind of thing...it is *one* way to get some unbiased information
So, "5% effective"...
As TFA description reads, the number of Israeli casualties is mostly due to a combination of factors, including bomb shelters and early warnings...
I think the "Iron Dome" people would respond to TFA thusly:
"Yes, but **the program** is effective. "Iron Dome" is our missile defense system, which is one part of our civil defense, which is an entire program of things to keep people safe...if you look at the program in its entirity it's a success"
Thank you Dave Raggett
Postol has a long history opposing any form of missile defense. While his assessment may well be correct, it should be viewed with considerable skepticism until data from opposing viewpoints is examined against his. Postol's view can be summaraized as: "No missile or rocket defense can work, therefore we should not try."
It seems that Ted Postol defines a successful intercept as one where the opposing warhead is completely destroyed in mid-air and doesn't count a rocket being damaged enough to be knocked down over an area where it can detonate harmlessly. He also relies on personal and public photos and reports to draw his conclusions. This would miss a good portion of the rockets fired as most are fired at night, when photographing rockets and interceptions are much more difficult.
I'm not going to argue that he is right or wrong. It just seems to me that his extrapolations are not based on enough factual evidence to draw a conclusion with any amount of confidence.
It would be cool to find out just what the real statistics are. I'm pretty sure, though, that Israel classifies this information as a state secret and we may never know in our lifetimes.
Don't tell anyone, but Iron Dome causes autism because it contains gluten! It's all part of a secret Illuminati plot, of course...
(Seeing as I live in Rishon Le Ziyyon, and watch interceptions every single day, and hear the distinctive sound of an interception (as opposed to a rocket hitting a building) several times a day, I reckon that the esteemed Mr. Postol would do well to loosen up his foil hat a bit)
story
20 rockets were found in a UN owned school in the Gaza strip. The UN is caliming they were not using the building and did not know the rockets were in the building. What happened to the rockets once the UN discovered they were hiding munitions for Hamas in a school? The UN did the only responsible thing possible and handed those rockets over to Hamas.
Interesting, lets read the link then:
So where did the rockets go? Well, according to Israel, they went right back to Hamas. As an official told The Times of Israel:
The rockets were passed on to the government authorities in Gaza, which is Hamas. In other words, UNRWA handed to Hamas rockets that could well be shot at Israel.”
Ok, that sounds damning, but lets read till the end for the buried lede:
On Monday afternoon, Chris Gunness, the spokesman for U.N.R.W.A., denied that the rockets went back to Hamas.
UNRWA did not give the rockets to Hamas. The rockets were taken away by bomb disposal experts that were answerable to the newly formed government of national consensus, which Hamas has left."
So the rockets went to people most likely hostile to Hamas. Now maybe the UN could have done better disposing of the bombs themselves, but a UN bomb disposal mission in Gaza sounds like something that could also go really wrong. Remember the role of the UN isn't to fight for Israel, in that case they're just trying to provide humanitarian aid.
I stole this Sig
second, Hamas are the aggressor. This is not particularly complicated.
Israel bulldozes Palestinian homes and builds settlements, Hamas fires rockets into Israel.
"Both sides" is usually a shitty argument to make, but in this case, both sides have been aggressors for decades.
If it wasn't complicated, we'd have peace by now.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Extreme would be to drop a nuke on them. See? Isn't it fun using strawmen to argue your point.
may be i'm a bit picky, but i'd say robbing their land, expelling them, denying access to water and healthcare, imprisioning them indefinitely with no warrant, and killing them at will or bombing them with white phosphor is quite extreme.
As much as I have sympathy for the Palestinians, their land is gone and it isn't coming back, no more than the Roman Empire is going to rise again and reclaim Palestine as a province for the Romans.
Is it fair that the land has left the hands of the Palestinians? Probably not. Did it happen? Yes. Will they ever get it back? Not in any meaningful way.
For their own sake, it is time to move on. If their answer is getting their own civilians killed, I'd think even unconditional surrender and exile would be preferable to any group that is actually concerned about their civilian population.
The Israelis are there. They aren't going anywhere, and they don't like the rhetoric that has been thrown at them about being cast into the sea. They remember genocide, and they aren't going back to Diaspora. The rocket attacks on the cities will only increase the resolve of a people who have the history that the Jews have.
Peaceful protest does work, probably better on a country that is a democracy like Israel than a war ever would. We've seen it work elsewhere. Israel can hold a hard line while rockets are shooting at their cities, but they cannot hide behind that excuse if the rockets stop falling. Violence has failed the Palestinians and their Arab allies for 70 years, and that isn't going to change now.
The time for what is "just" is over. It is now time to do what it takes to improve the future for everyone in Palestine. The bombs and rockets need to stop falling, and someone has to do it first. I think the Palestinians would have the most advantage from ending the struggle and adopting a policy that might actually net them more gains and fewer deaths of their own people. If Israel persists in extremist settlements and reprisals when there is nothing to reprise against, they will lose the support of their allies, and they need their allies. Painful as it would be, there is no military option for Palestine worth considering and so those actions should be set aside.
More than 500 Palestinians dead and climbing and you say Israel is trying to minimise casualties? Do you seriously expect people to believe that?
Absolutely, yes. If Israel were actually out to cause casualties, rather than to prevent them, the death toll would be enormous. If they were merely careless of civilian casualties, the death toll would not only be higher, it would be statistically correlated with the demographics of the Palestinian people, with deaths of women, children, and the elderly roughly in proportion to the size of those groups in the general population.
Instead, the Palestinian death statistics are massively skewed towards males aged 18-38. That can't happen if you're killing civilians either deliberately or carelessly. But it's exactly what you'd see if you were carefully targeting enemy combatants.
So, we can see that Hamas is just following what it was organized to do. It's not difficult to understand.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!