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The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

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Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#51

Post by nmeofthestate »

eytanlevit wrote: post #25

Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each. In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the…

"Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets"

I didn't realise this - I thought the majority of Gaza-fired rockets were fabricated in Gaza and pretty ineffectual, hence the 29 casualties since 2001.

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#52

Post by gojomo »

A meta-point about understanding hostilities-in-progress:

As curious analytical types, or as motivated participants in political debates about proper defense systems and policies, we'd like to know what's really going on, and sooner rather than later.

But note that in the "fog of war", confusion about what's really working and what isn't can be important. Lots of bad information will circulate, either due to natural misunderstandings or the calculated propaganda efforts of affected groups.

Maybe a myth of Iron Dome potency serves other purposes, covering for other tactics or shifting enemy behavior usefully. Or alternatively, maybe a myth of Iron Dome impotency and cost-ineffectiveness serves other purposes.

This of course makes contemporaneous democratic, open-society discussion of war a nearly-intractable task. It could be years (if ever) before outsiders and laypeople get a reasonable idea of what's really going on. This doesn't mean it's not worth discussing, just that confidence in any evidence or conclusions should be kept very, very low for quite a while.

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#53

Post by ars »

dingaling wrote: post #49
ars wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know incorrectly. The US does spend money on the system, but that's because they want it themself, so they invested in it. In general any money the US spends is earmarked for US companies, so it's a form of subsidy to US companies. The interceptors are made in Israel, so the US doesn't pay for them.

> The US does spend money on the system, but that's because they want it themself, so they invested in it. The US military does not use Iron Dome yet the $1 billion spent from DoD allocations so far on the system actually outweighs total Israeli spending. In March an agreement was signed to increase US contractor participation in manufacture so that it becomes eligible for FMS funding. The US solution to the same pro…

Your numbers are off. The US wants to invest that much, but has not actually done so. Meanwhile Israel has invested (or plans to, it's not clear) at least $1 billion, on R&D and a manufacturing line.

That number doesn't make sense anyway - they built 9 batteries, 2 to 4 of which Israel did before the US got involved. Each costs 50 million. 5*50 million = 250 million which is approximately what the US actually spent (rather than talked about, or planned to, spend).

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#54

Post by eytanlevit »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #51
eytanlevit wrote: post #25

Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each. In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the…

"Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets" I didn't realise this - I thought the majority of Gaza-fired rockets were fabricated in Gaza and pretty ineffectual, hence the 29 casualties since 2001.

These are the rockets being shot from Gaza: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/images/ham...

In early years they mainly shot the ones of the left, in the recent years and mainly in the current conflict they're shooting military grade Fadjr5 and M302(the two on the left) that have a serious kill payload(greater kinetic energy + warhead size).

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#55

Post by bjourne »

absherwin wrote: post #11

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 n…

The missiles are unguided which means they weren't very accurate to begin with. The militants fills them up with fuel and points them in an angle which they believe will hit an Israeli city centre.

Most of the rockets aren't SCUD missiles or anything close to that. Here is a good picture of breakdown of Hamas' rocket types:

http://www.airforceworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11...

Note that most rocket attacks are using Qassam rockets and targetted towards Sderot which is only about a few hundred meters from the Gaza Strip and within viewing distance of it:

http://goo.gl/maps/Vkbrd

I would guess that missiles against Sderot flies at a low altitude and has a too short air time for any system to intercept them.

Btw if you do an image search on the Palestinian rockets, you'll only find pictures of badass rockets like this one: http://jssnews.com/content/assets/2012/12/qassam-rocket-powe... They like to pose with their biggest ones to seem dangerous and Israel also likes to show them because it makes the threat appear much bigger than it is. E.g Sderot was hit with 5000 Qassam rockets leading to 10 casualties. It's not only because Israel's defense is good, the rockets aren't that good to begin with.

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#56

Post by aranazo »

salberts wrote: post #34
kamaal wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>As an Israeli, I've always heard the Iron Dome rockets are stupid expensive to fire I was wondering how they deal with DDoS scenarios. Lets say the enemy just mixes genuine rockets with dummy one's and keeps firing. They could essentially create a scenario where a lot of Iron dome missiles can be wasted destroying dud rockets.

Why on earth would they do that? If you can launch 9 dummy rockets and 1 real or 10 juts real rockets, wouldn't you just launch real rockets?! The effort and risk involved in launching any kind of rocket is about the same...

Rockets without a payload are lighter and have greater range so you can attack more northerly targets - for example Tel Aviv. They are about public relations far more than they are conventional military weapons.

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#58

Post by jzwinck »

eytanlevit wrote: post #25

Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each. In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the…

> Hamas has already developed a new tactic, building tunnels under the border into Israeli towns and have 10-20 Hamas soldiers come with handcuffs and syringes with anastasia to kidnap Israeli civilians.

I tried to dig up a source for this, and while I did find an article published just today [1], it says the tunnels have been used to (try to) kidnap Israeli soldiers, and on a rather smaller scale (a few intruders, not 10-20). Has there been any incident (successful or interrupted) of civilians kidnapped via these tunnels? It surely is a terrifying prospect, but how practical is it?

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-hamas-uses-its-tunnels-to-ki...

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#59

Post by eytanlevit »

jzwinck wrote: post #58
eytanlevit wrote: post #25

Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each. In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the…

> Hamas has already developed a new tactic, building tunnels under the border into Israeli towns and have 10-20 Hamas soldiers come with handcuffs and syringes with anastasia to kidnap Israeli civilians. I tried to dig up a source for this, and while I did find an article published just today [1], it says the tunnels have been used to (try to) kidnap Israeli soldiers, and on a rather smaller scale (a few intruders, n…

This happend just 24 hours ago: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.606531

"The incident in which the four IDF soldiers were killed near Nir-Am occurred at about 6:30 Monday morning, when at least 10 Palestinians entered Israeli territory from the tunnel and split into two groups, one tried to make its way to Kibbutz Erez and the other to Kibbutz Nir-Am."

Kibbutz == a civilian community or village.

Also, in a different tunnel incident: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/...

"According to the Israeli military, the purpose of the militants was not only to kill but also to kidnap, as was evident by the equipment they carried, which included, arms, syringes, tranquillisers, plastic handcuffs and even IDF uniforms."

Re: The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

#60

Post by golergka »

kamaal wrote: post #28
nrubin wrote: post #21

From what I understand, many of the statistics quoted about Iron Dome are for "attempted interceptions". This skews the effectiveness of the system towards high-priority scenarios, maybe those that are more likely to produce a winning outcome for Iron Dome. As an Israeli, I've always heard the Iron Dome rockets are stupid expensive to fire, so the IDF really only wants to fire them during scenarios that are high risk…

>>As an Israeli, I've always heard the Iron Dome rockets are stupid expensive to fire I was wondering how they deal with DDoS scenarios. Lets say the enemy just mixes genuine rockets with dummy one's and keeps firing. They could essentially create a scenario where a lot of Iron dome missiles can be wasted destroying dud rockets.

Every launch site or detected launcher is attacked with an air strike, so setting up a lot of launchers to fire up all at once is very problematic.
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