The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

This article is based on the flawed assumption that where the rocket explodes is irrelevant. His criteria for success is frontal impact which the author claims is the only way to destroy this midair. Regardless of this, if the impact alters the trajectory to bring down the rocket in a less populated area, fewer people die.

The author has been a vocal critic of missile defense systems for decades. While that doesn't negate his arguments, it suggests a potential motivation for his artificial definition of success.

Edit: As the comment below points out, the rocket's trajectory could be changed so as to increase casualties. While that's true, it won't do so on average for several reasons. A rocket is only targeted if the system believes it has a high probability of striking a populated area. Since the expected losses are high, average will be better. In fact, average should be much better because the distribution of population density is so skewed. A small percentage of land is in dense regions. In this particular case, there's the added advantage that the most populous cities are relatively far away from Gaza so early impact is better.

There have been a shockingly low number of deaths on the Israeli side, does this mean that if the Iron Dome wasn't even deployed, that the rockets launched from Palestine would cause little to no human losses? I had assumed that the large imbalance of deaths between Israel and Palestine was because of Israel's technological advantage (Iron Dome), and not that the Palestinian rockets were largely ineffective.

It's caused by multiple factors (some of them are based on Israel's technological advantage) - shelters are everywhere, Israelis are trained really well (even falling to the ground before a rocket impact reduces casualties), they have sophisticated warning system - they even have an app for that [1]

Obviously I cannot tell how efficient Iron Dome is but they certainly have other effective tools at their disposal.

[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249866/Red_Alert_app...

It might but it is unlikely, considering that a rocket is aimed to be most efficient. Deviating it from it's course should be enough to decrease the effect.

An exception to this might be that the rocket aims a city of thousands, who get sheltered successfully, which means the rocket would kill about zero people. When the rocket now gets deviated it might hit a target with hundred people who didn't get sheltered. Therefore the result for the population might be worse. My feeling (and I am definitely not an expert) is that this is comparatively unlikely, though.

It's painful to see someone try a scientific approach (which is good!) but already fails in the assumptions. There are probably many ways a defense rocket could harm an incoming missile without hitting it directly up front. Destroying it's back might and should result in the warhead not reaching it's designated target, which is already a success. Even exploding near a missile might change the air environment of this rocket enough to harm it's target trajectory. Last but not least every kind of pressure might result in damage to the rocket's proper functioning and thereby result in it's early triggering or not triggering at all.

While I also believe that a tool like the Iron Dome might be inefficient for it's pure militaristic purpose (it might have psychological purposes as well) the article is not much help in deciding whether this assumption is true or not, because the assumptions are already flawed.