How has this anti-missile defense system performed so far during this recent flare-up of violence?
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How has this anti-missile defense system performed so far during this recent flare-up of violence?
They have had a success and haven't mentioned failures. This is exciting technology and I am sure we'll hear more.
This article says that Iron Dome has intercepted 10 rockets, but 120 have also hit the south:
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article...ID=215882&R=R1
Videos of Iron Dome in action:
http://muqata.blogspot.com/2011/04/w...l-missile.html
This one is nice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TAhMu4wp5U
To see more just type "כיפת ברזל" (iron dome) in YouTube and sort the videos by date uploaded.
But no rockets have fallen in Israeli populated areas? Iron Dome is supposed to shoot rockets which may fall in Israeli cities only. Those which don't, are to be allowed to fall.
The problem is we broadcast where they are stationed so Hamas shoots elsewhere. Still it's $40,000 per shot so it does suck.
The only thing that these 2 am Sirens do, is when the kids go to sleep, Dad's and Mom's decide to have more kids.
How much territory do the batteries at Ashkelon and Be'er Sheva cover? Iron Dome has a range of up to 70km, is it enough to cover the whole southern part of the country?
PS: As far as my understanding goes, they should. Grads have a range of 30-40km if I'm not mistaken.
Surely once they're deployed in larger numbers interceptor costs will drop, right? $40k per missile is way too expensive.
The grads today are just able to get by Beer Sheva and barely up to Rishon so they may be slightly past the 40 km range. Our Military is budgeting more to be built but none of us knows when they'll be a price break and what goes into these sophistocated devices. Because the iron dome has a limited space it makes it hard to cover the smaller areas that are vulnerable though less because they are spread out.
Even if casualties get cut down from these it still doesn't shake the fact that sirens disrupt our lives and stress us Negev dwellers out.
We need to build a corridor along the siani and surround Gaza on 4 sides to stop the smuggling. It needs to be so well fortified to keep our soldiers safe.
Israel knows where the tunnels are, I'm also 100% sure that it knows where the missile caches are too. These would be located in the midst of highly populated residential areas because Hamas is convinced that Isreal would not explode them because of collateral damage. 20,000 missiles at the last count and every one with a Jews name on it. I'm not so soft and I have no qualms what so ever about protecting my family. If the politicians could view Israelis Jews as family and not just voters I know that they would react differently.
farmboy,
I don't think our politicians are out of touch and if you follow a guy like Lieberman he tells what we all are feeling.
We are very close to going into Gaza and I think if we have another episode like this weekend it'll be enough to move soldiers in.
Lieberman has been 'Persona non grata" for years and is only now being listened to. I know that if he had had his own way Cast Lead would have been completed.Originally Posted by GratefulFred
Just as a side issue, Cast Lead as a name may have meant something significant in Hebrew but to the rest of the world it had the conotations of Israel going into Gaza and throwing lead bullets around indiscriminately.
I hope the next operation is named more apropriately and sends the message to the world what it is really about. They need to call it something like "Stop Bombing our Women and Kids, Enough Already"
You know the Katushya is nothing more than a spin on the Soviet truck mounted WW2 'Stalin Organ' MRLS artillery rocket. Why not wheel a bunch of trucks up to the Gaza and let fly 200 unguided artillery rockets? The original RS-132 rocket it's based on is a crude cheap weapon. Cheap is the key.
It cost them $150 to make a kassam in Gaza and it costs us $40,000 to shoot it down (though we typically go for grads) and the iron dome system costs $500 million each.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/hta.../20110412.aspx
From news article: This is a big turnaround for this system. Four months ago, the Israeli military revealed that its new Iron Dome anti-rocket system was not meant for defending towns and villages, but military bases. For years, politicians touted Iron Dome as a means of defending civilians living close to rockets fired from Gaza in the south and Lebanon in the north. But it turns out that it takes about 15 seconds for Iron Dome to detect, identify and fire its missiles. But most of the civilian targets currently under fire from Gaza are so close to the border (within 13 kilometers) that the rockets are fired and land in less than 15 seconds. This means that the town of Sderot, the closest Israeli urban area to Gaza, cannot be helped by Iron Dome.
Israel has bought seven batteries of Iron Dome, to be delivered over the next two years. Each battery has radar and control equipment, and four missile launchers. The first battery has been delivered. Each battery costs about $37 million, which includes over fifty missiles.
During tests, the system detected and shot down BM-21 (122mm) and Kassam rockets. The manufacturer, Rafael, was offered a large bonus if they got the system working ahead of schedule. When Iron Dome was first proposed five years ago, it was to take five years (until 2012) to get it operational. In addition to the cash incentive, there's also the rockets still coming out of Gaza, and being stockpiled by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. But the current low rate of rocket attacks are more of a political and psychological danger, than a real one.
Iron Dome uses two radars to quickly calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket (Palestinian Kassams from Gaza, or Russian and Iranian designs favored by Hezbollah in Lebanon) and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. But if the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area, a $40,000 guided missile is fired to intercept the rocket. This makes the system cost-effective. That's because Hezbollah fired 4,000 rockets in 2006, and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired over six thousand Kassam rockets in the past eight years, and the Israelis know where each of them landed. Over 90 percent of these rockets landed in uninhabited areas, and few of those that did caused few casualties. Still, a thousand interceptor missiles would cost $40 million. But that would save large quantities of military equipment and avoid many dead and injured troops. Israel already has a radar system in place that gives some warning of approaching rockets. Iron Dome will use that system, in addition to another, more specialized radar in southern Israel.
About bloody time...
source: http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=223337SDEROT - Israel has deployed an Iron Dome rocket interceptor outside a Gaza border town that has borne the brunt of Palestinian shelling attacks, posing a new test for the fledgling system underwritten by Washington.
Rolled out in March in an accelerated production schedule, Iron Dome won plaudits from US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon for downing eight out of nine Katyusha-style rockets fired at two southern Israeli cities from Gaza in one day.
The movement this week of an Iron Dome unit to Sderot, within four kilometres (two miles) of the Gaza Strip, signaled readiness to deal with short-range rocket and mortar barrages in the face of skepticism from some independent experts about its capabilities.
"Iron Dome has passed field trials for threats with ranges of between four kilometres to 40 kilometres, so this deployment tests the lower-most end of that spectrum," said Uzi Rubin, a missile designer who consults for Israel's Defense Ministry...
Israel wants between 10 and 15 units to defend its Palestinian and Lebanese fronts...
"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy." (Ps. 137: 5-7)"
"Any generation in which the Temple is not built, it is as if it had been destroyed in their times" (Yerushalmi, Yoma 1a).
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