War propagnda

Is Israel Really as Good at Shooting Down Rockets as it Claims? (Click here to read more)

Monday 1:50pm

Adam Weinstein

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Israel's "Iron Dome" anti-rocket system is one of the most reliable defense tools on earth. It stops almost every deadly missile tossed its way. It is a miracle of modern civilization. These are claims repeated by reputable Western news sources. But what if they're bogus?

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Iron Dome is the much-ballyhooed air-defense battery, built by Raytheon and an Israeli defense contractor, that the tiny nation has used to counter rocket attacks from Gazan rebels. Much like the Patriot missile in Iraq I, and the C-RAM in Iraq II, the Iron Dome has become a legend of the current conflict. For more than two years, Israeli officials have asserted that Iron Dome successfully kills 90 percent of the rockets lobbed at their homeland. 

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That's a figure virtually unheard of in air defense. Yet it's a figure that keeps getting repeated by reporters, subtly suggesting a victory for technologically advanced civilizations over their discontents—reminiscent of the myths surrounding Israel's miraculous irrigation of the desert lands that had lain fallow under Arab control. Iron Dome's iron reputation has real consequences here in the United States—where Congress just decided to give Israel $352 million for more Iron Dome systems, twice as much as the DOD had recommended. 

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Its reputation, though, is built more on rumor than on evidence. Defense One reports:

Israel's claims about the anti-rocket shield's effectiveness, specifically that it is able to intercept 90 percent of the rockets that Hamas has sent into Israel, are tantamount to fraud according to MITscience, technology and national security expert Ted Postol.

In a paper submitted to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, obtained prior to publication by Defense One, Postol explains at length the 90 percent number is fetched from thin air.

 

Postol's work is based on a lot of math, but it points out what's intuitive: Shooting a missile head-on at another missile is really hard. And if the Iron Dome's projectile doesn't meet an incoming one at just the right trajectory and speed, it either misses, or simply knocks a still-live rocket off course in its fall to earth:

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His paper shows that given low engagement rate, low warheard destruction rate and issues of missing data, the actual success rate for the Dome falls much closer to a miserable 5 percent.

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