Even though this is an old thread and I have been away for a while, I was asked to comment, so here goes...
In my opinion, the Iron Dome system proved successful beyond expectations. Am not going to use hyperbolic language like 'wildly' or 'fantastic' but keep as neutral as possible.
The Daily Mail article, citing whoever Israeli experts, is not being fair to the air defense concept in general and to the Iron Dome system in particular.
Of the nearly 700 missiles fired into Israel over the weekend, the Iron Dome missile defence only reportedly intercepted 240. Hamas's military wing claimed it was a new tactic to overwhelm the system.
www.dailymail.co.uk
"At the weekend around 690 missiles were launched into Israel over the course of two days, leaving four civilians dead and injuring nearly 200 people.
But of the hundreds of projectiles fired into the country, the Iron Dome only intercepted 240, according to Haaretz. "
This is an outstanding combat record considering the nature of the attacker which in this case is unguided rockets launched at civilian populated areas. Ideally, we want zero human casualties and the worst of the casualty type is a death. The wounded is also categorized as a casualty. But if we cannot achieve the ideal, then we want to minimize deaths. In warfare, often the intention is to inflict
HUMAN casualties and we will expend resources that, from a 'bean counting' perspective, seems to be grossly disproportionate just to kill one or a few humans. In the same vein, we will also expend much resources to rescue a single downed pilot, always risking several troops and expensive hardware. In this case, five deaths out of several hundreds unguided rockets is outstanding statistics.
This is not a good criticism. Let us take the words 'civilian sectors' for a moment and place a real estate figure of 10 sq/km, for example. Inside this 10 sq/km area, we have the usual human infrastructures like schools, markets, homes, parks, etc.
If the air raid siren sent everyone into shelters and a bomb/rocket landed on an empty parking lot, how does this factored into being a successful attack
AND a successful defense? No one was killed but the bomb/rocket did landed onto a civilian structure. The parking lot would be considered a
POPULATED civilian structure under the Geneva Convention. The context of the word 'populated' mean the structure is intended for human use in a
CONSISTENT pattern. There maybe some humans at night but filled during the day. One day after another, and so on. But when the air raid siren sent the humans into protected or even armored environment, the odds of having human casualties diminished. The attacker, the one who sent the bomb/rocket, would calculate the event as a success. The defender, whether it was active defense or not, would also calculate the event as a success. Each calculus came from a different perspective.
Because this is about perspective, it rendered questionable the DM article as to its fairness. Even if the entire volley of ID interceptors failed some, the successful intercepts saved lives. A 'volley' mean a time period where some things (plural) happen. A volley of rockets mean X quantity of rockets are launched sequentially inside a timed period. So if there were ten rockets launched and five were intercepted, that would have been time for the humans to seek protected/armored environment, reducing the odds of deaths. So what really failed? The interceptions that failed? Or the reduced/zero human casualties?
If we are to go by this simple comment, Amidror did not say the ID system 'failed'. This is not being pedantic, but about being precise with words. Words that have consequences.
"Major General Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser and retired head of the Military Intelligence's Research Department, admitted short range rockets were able to exploit gaps in the Iron Dome.
He told The Jerusalem Post: 'We don't have enough time to intercept it.'"
Short range weaponry
ALWAYS produce response time problems and defensive errors. An interceptor is reactive. It cannot know what to do until it is given some information and that takes time.
This image...
...Is revealing and instructive.
On the left are the attackers. On the right are the interceptors. The points of lights -- successful interceptions. Note the interceptors' trails -- short. If we can trace the attackers' flight trail from launch to intercept points, we will see that the attackers' trails would be much longer. But we do not need to see them. The points of intercepts are indicative enough. The interceptors' short flight time places much technical demands on the ID system overall, from ground controller radar's ability to discriminate the small rockets, to the interceptor's quickness in maneuvers to try to make collision. There will gaps and misses. The photo does not mean all intercepts happened the moment the photo was taken. The starlight trails in the sky mean the photo was taken over time.
If any individual interceptor failed, what was the failure mode? Lack of radar guidance? Failed flight control? The attacker was too low in altitude? The interceptor's propulsion failed? The interceptor's IR guidance failed? We will never know because each attempt is destructive even if the interceptor failed because it will be destroyed when it ran out of fuel and fell to the ground. Nevertheless, the successful intercepts are what made the system overall combat proven and --
DESIRABLE. Make no mistake about this. Behind the scene, many countries quietly queried Israel about purchasing the system or better yet, getting the engineering program. The base technology for all the discrete components already exists. The hard part is the engineering to put them all into a functional package and Israel succeeded.
The Iron Dome system is not a failure.
www.businessinsider.com
