A Skeptical View of Israel's Iron Dome Rocket Defense System 379
Lasrick (2629253) writes It isn't as if real analysis of Israel's "Iron Dome" isn't available, but invariably, whenever Israel has a skirmish the media is filled with glowing reports of how well the system works, and we always find out months later that the numbers were exaggerated. John Mecklin at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists looks at the coverage of Iron Dome in the recent exchanges between Israel and Hamas and finds the pattern is repeating itself. However, 'Ted Postol, an MIT-based missile defense expert and frequent Bulletin contributor, provided a dose of context to the Iron Dome coverage in a National Public Radio interview Wednesday. "We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all,"' Includes a good explanation of the differences between Iron Dome (a 'rocket defense system') and missile defense systems pushed by the U.S.
Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
So please, don't fall for it. Don't spend the whole comment section arguing about causes and consequences of the conflict, who started it, who deserves is, etc.
Stay on topic and discuss the technical aspects of the missile system, at least that is what should be discussed here.
On bizarro world Slashdot, maybe
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It's Bush's fault.
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Funny)
I worked on the beginning of Regan's Star Wars project. We viewed the problem as one in which you try to stop a bullet with a bullet. Add long range and intelligence to the bullet and the problem gets harder.The problem is hard and physics places many constraints on the solution. At one point management thought that space based defense was what we wanted until we showed that the time/distances were too great to be effective. Now we just have a scaled back terminal defense with very limited capabilities. After all these years the only value that I think that missile defense has is PR. Effective? Not really. Forget Star Wars the movie. It's not going to happen.
Except perhaps in a galaxy far, far away
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how lousy the alternatives for appearing to be taking action against the rocket menace are (grovelling through every last hidy-hole in Gaza is militarily doable but a PR debacle and unlikely to turn up more than a few bits and pieces of impoverished machine tools, because low-end rockets just aren't that hard to build. Paying Hezbollah a visit might turn up somewhat more interesting stuff; but that hasn't turned out well in the past) a system that postpones or prevents somebody taking the bait and trying them might be quite helpful.
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Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
No, in the case of Iron Dome, that's only PR too. They're shooting $50k+ missiles at $800 rockets. Even after factoring in that Israel's per-capita GDP is 20 times that of Palestine's, that's still a losing proposition, even *if* they had a 100% hit rate (which this article is suggesting it's anything-but) and assuming that you get the launcher, radar, etc for free instead of the actual $55 million per unit. It's in Palestine's best interests that Israel deploy as many of them as possible and try to shoot down every last rocket, because every shekel they spend on Iron Domes and missiles is a shekel they don't spend on jets, tanks, and bombs.
Re:Subject bait (Score:4, Insightful)
How much is Israel spending, though, and how much of Iron Dome's cost is borne by American foreign aid?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget Star Wars the movie anyway. Vader royally fucked up on planet Hoth, seemed to have an overwhelming position but for some reason he decides to go on foot to capture Luke & Leia personnally. But everyone manages to escape and the scary star destroyers in orbit don't manage to destroy or stop any ship. The star destroyers are managed by grossly incompetent captains.. But even with such idiots at the bar, victory would have been certain would all the ships and stuff have burnt the rebel place to the ground with a giant laser/blaster/plasma massacre.
As for the first movie, it has manually aimed WW2-style air defences ;). "The rebel fighters are too small for our turbolasers", or something like that.
Star Wars is about resistance/terrorists defeating an evil military industrial empire that suffers from royal fuck ups and ineffective pork barrel weapon projects.
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Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Informative)
Using a nuclear device at high altitude? You do know what happens if you do that, right? [wikipedia.org] That one test bomb knocked out street lights and long distance phone service nearly 1000 miles away and took out a third of all satellites in orbit around Earth at that point in time.
Hand wringing of the BAS (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember in the "run up" to the First Iraq War (the "Gulf War') about an interview with some high-ranking Saudi dude being concern-trolled "what about Iraq attacking the oil fields (with Scuds)?" The Saudi official smiled somewhat patronizingly at the news dude and responded, "We are equipped with the Patriot" at the time when the US public didn't know a Patriot from a Tory or that anyone was mad enough to use an ack-ack missile against a Scud rocket.
War is always about PR (i.e. deception). Everyone knew the Scud couldn't hit anything (except in some lucky for the enemy, unlucky for us shots). The Saudi leaders were just too happy to go along with "the Patriot is a Scud defense shield" because they knew that strategically, the Scud was of no consequence and this way they could tell their people to "just chill, bro, the Americans shared with us the Patriot" as the Scuds rained down. The US hurredly gave the Israelis the Patriot to get them to "just chill, bro", but everyone was coming out of the woodwork about how the Patriot was just a sham defense against an incoming missile not aimed at anything.
The "Patriot works" fit Saudi propaganda interests, but went against the Israeli propaganda at the time because they Israelis were itchy to get into the fight of "Scud hunting", where air attacks against this mobile platform that couldn't hit anything in the first place were regarded as futile by the U.S.. The Israelis argued that their pilots would press futile attacks against the Scud more aggressively because they were defending their women and children against the largely ineffective Scud attacks, but the US argued this was Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti's war aim, to lob Scuds to draw the Israelis in to fracture the coalition.
As for Palestinians and the war fighting power they have, suicide bombing are perhaps the most effective thing they have to inflict Israeli casualties, but it really works against them propaganda wise. The singularly most effective thing they had going was the First Intifida, where they were using rock-throwing young people as rubber-bullet sponges. From a propaganda standpoint, that was devastating in its effectiveness of portraying the Israeli troops as hateful goons, whether this was true or not, but the optics on TV were rapidly undermining Israel as a just cause. Why the PLO gave up on a tactic that was working I have no idea, but this may speak to why the conflict has dragged on so long when the Palestinians have demographics and world sympathy in their corner. The Palestinians may simply have bad leaders.
The rocket attacks are a kind of middle ground tactic in sacrificing your own guys. It is not the casualties inflicted by the rocket attacks, it is the 100:1 casualties of your own people that is a feature-not-a-bug, of rallying your own people and of getting Americans to pray in their Christian churches "for an end to the violence."
As to why the Israelis are playing along be inflicting so many casualties, maybe that is a feature-not-a-bug. For one thing, they are targeting "the leaders" and trying to be creative in a tactical sense with their tech for giving telephone warnings. Maybe the Israeli calculus is "the leaders talk tough but they are not that keen on being blown up themselves."
Also, on one hand, Israel is a "Western" country where people get all hand-wringy about the "violence" (I use scare quotes because what is taking place is a war between two sides with irreconcilable national interests and not some unexplained "violence"). On the other hand, Israel is a Middle Eastern country with a substantial Oriental Jewish population displaced from Cairo, Baghdad
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I can't help but picture a sign on the door at the exit of an airport in Israel. It reads "Thank-you for not stirring up ancient inter-tribal conflict".
I think you're post will be as effective as such a hypothetical sign; but thanks for trying. X --+ (Don Quixote's lance and a windmill).
Re:Subject bait (Score:4, Informative)
Stay on topic and discuss the technical aspects of the missile system, at least that is what should be discussed here.
I live in Beersheba. Of the two hundred or so rockets shot at my city in the past week, we had our first casualty yesterday: an 80 year old woman was injured when a rocket fell outside her house. So far as I know (by hearing the different booms of both successful hits and Iron Dome intercepts) this was only the fourth or fifth rocket to get past the Iron Dome into the city. I'll ask my daughters tomorrow morning: they are the ones keeping score of the booms that they hear.
So from a technical point of view, the Iron Dome is very effective.
That doesn't mean that the rockets have no effect on us, even if they are not blowing up our houses. We _still_ have 60 seconds to get ourselves and the children to shelter 2 or 3 times per night when they shoot at us and the alarms go off, so nobody is getting any sleep. All other aspects of life are "get ourselves and the children in 60 seconds" so that means that working is affected, shopping for food is affected, going to the toilet is affected, walking the dog is affected, etc.
We still have it better than the Gazans, though. They do not have alarms, their only warning is pamphlets dropped from F16s telling them to evacuate buildings used to launch rockets at Israel before they are destroyed. Unfortunately, a large part of their populate screems "Shahid" and actually invite the neighbours over to be a part of "protecting" by being in the building before it is bombed. I understand that their values and their culture is different than ours, but I still feel bad for the children who have to be a part of the "be a Martyr" culture, not the "save yourselves" culture. I really do feel pity for them.
I understand that of the 120+ people killed in Gaza in the past week, about 20 were civilians (not militants). Israelis mourn those casualties just as we mourn our own. I understand that there is no 100% effective way to remove the Hamas without injuring the civilians, but that does not belittle thier casualties in any way. As an Israeli and a neighbour of Gaza I tell you: pity the Gazans.
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Hmm, let me see; during this recent exchange, how many Israelies were killed or injured? You mention 1 elderly lady, so that is 1 that I have heard of so far. You also mention 20 civilians in Gaza, but in the same breath imply that it is probably their own fault. Now, if you step back a bit and look at what you are saying, can you understand why so many people in the rest of the world feel less than convinced of your sincerity?
You guys enjoy the protection of the US, you have overwhelming, technological adv
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Informative)
The 'shelter' is one of two places:
1) The building stairwell, as it has no outside walls.
2) The underground shelter, which means that we must run though completely unprotected areas to get there.
Note that exactly the "unprotected areas" I mention were in fact completely destroyed when a missle hit in November 2012. Luckily, we were in the stairwell at the time, and now we always run to the stairwell for that reason. Of course, the stairwell will not protect us from a direct hit on the building as the undergroud shelter would, but it does protect us from the missles' shrapnell that land outside the building.
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Your posting on /. and not sledgehammering a hole in the concrete/digging a foxhole at the base of the stairwell why exactly?
Railroad ties make decent improvised shelter roofs.
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, we just had another rocket attack while I was composing the previous post.
I don't think that damaging the building structure is a wise move considering the threat. I do appreciate the idea, though. I have taken some precaution and improvised some things which are likely to be of value considering the situation.
Railroad ties would make horrible improvised shelter roofs. You don't want that falling on your child's head! Rather, armoured concrete (lots of armoured concrete) and dirt (lots of dirt) make decent shelter roofs.
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In America? Home Depot/Lowes/anyplace that has landscaping supplies. They're with the retaining wall masonry.
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell are you still living there?
It's my home.
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People are constantly losing their "home" for as minor a reason as losing their job and having to transfer to another city. Call me a coward, but I'd move if my city was under long-term, constant attack.
But regardless of your personal motivation, why would you want to traumatize your children by having them grow up in the midst of such fear and violence?
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I understand your position, I suppose that you live in a land that is not the ancestrial homeland of your people? I.e. a North American of European decent? I understand that it is probably difficult for you to understand my need to stay. I find some aspects of other cultures difficult to understand as well, as I've mentioned above.
I have a personal connection to this land. So does somebody else. Hence, war! I'm sure that the Hamas would love nothing more than for me to pack up and leave.
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I'm starting to wonder if the best thing anyone could do for the Holy Land and its residents was to detonate enough dirty bombs there to force everyone to decide whether living there is worth more than their own lives, rather than just their neighbours.
Oh well, with any luck climate change will clear the place through desertification.
Re:Subject bait (Score:4, Insightful)
The ancestral land of your people is whoever you were pissing off last. The Jews have roamed the entire fertile crescent and have been told to get the fuck out, or got used by those already there in each and every land. Maybe if you didn't think the world is supposed to cater to you, you could spend less time putting up "Tolerance Museums" and more time actually being tolerated.
Actually, that is true of every civilization that had roamed the fertile crescent at the beginning of recorded history. As you can see, we're the only ones left!
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Highly debatable, actually Palestinian Arabs are descendants of Levantine Semites as much as Jews, so you wouldn't say that yours is the only civilization still around.
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Because:
A. No place in Israel is truely safe.
During the second Lebanon war, the most safe place was around where I live (maximal distance from both Gaza and Lebanon). I live 5 Kilometers from the green line. If the Palestinians around my area decide to join in, my house will be in more danger than Dotan's.
B. Not living in Israel is not really an option.
Obviously, for some, it is. Long term, however, history showed that Jews don't fare well when not under self government. Thankfully, antisemitism suffered a
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Israeli Jews are hardly free loaders.
There be reasons to dislike Israel, but what the Jews that have accomplished there is incredible. Especially whey you consider that they do it all under constant terrorist attacks.
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Ha ha! Well, _technically_, isn't it the palestinian's home? But I suppose might makes right and all that.. ;-)
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Ha ha! Well, _technically_, isn't it the palestinian's home? But I suppose might makes right and all that.. ;-)
I don't know what you mean by "technically", but yes both people call this land home. Hence, war!
Hamas has been shooting rockets at Israel non-stop for years, but only when we shoot back does it become news. Assad kills on average 300 people per day for the past three years, but that is not news. Up until last week, more Gazans have been killed by Hamas rocket launches gone bad than by Israel, but that is not news. 100+ of the 120+ Gazans killed were Hamas militants, that is about 85% militants-to-civilians
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Assad kills on average 300 people per day for the past three years, but that is not news.
Well, actually, that's been in the news quite a bit
Re: Subject bait (Score:3)
You can compare shit to other shit, but in the end two wrongs doesn't make a right. Civilians are killed in Gaza, and that is always bad. Although, in the end, it's Hamas who is the ultimate culprit. They are launching and storing their rockets from urban areas, in or next to homes, hospitals, schools and mosques. They are using their own people as a human shield. It's their choice to do so. They could have also chosen to launch from a field, where civilian casualties would have been extremely unlikely.
As f
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Why the hell are you still living there?
It's my home.
And before 1947 Beersheba was a town of mostly Palestinians. Then in October 1948 [wikipedia.org] the Israeli goverment decided to truck the palestinian's to Gaza. Shortly after having displaced the palestinians their houses got occupied by people from the newly formed Israel. I am sure there are still people alive in Gaza who remember when their house was stolen.
I am sephardi, from mexico. I did the Aliyah and went to israel. I was not happy with what I saw. I found converted indigenous people from Latin america [npr.org] living
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And before 1947 Beersheba was a town of mostly Palestinians. Then in October 1948 [wikipedia.org] the Israeli goverment decided to truck the palestinian's to Gaza. Shortly after having displaced the palestinians their houses got occupied by people from the newly formed Israel. I am sure there are still people alive in Gaza who remember when their house was stolen.
And before _whatever_date_is_inconvenient_for_somebody_else Beersheba was a town of Jews. You can go back as far or as close as you want and find somebody living here. I mention that in my other posts.
I do believe that it was the King of Morocco who moved most of the Muslims out of Beersheba in 1947, with a promise of returning them after the Jews were exterminated. I do know of the forced evacuations at the hand of the Israeli army as well, much as the Jews were forced out of Morocco, Algers, Tunis, Lybia,
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What about west bank where people are kicked out of their homes so that settlers can move in? The real problem over there is not the weapons, but the attitude that keeps the weapons alive. There is not good guys versus bad guys, but bad guys and other bad guys. Every time someone attempts to start a peace process one or the other side, or *both*, do something to hijack it. Everyone in the world except for Israelis know that the settlements are illegal and every new house causes immense anger. If the Is
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Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit, I must be missing something. If a bunch of nutjobs in Tijuana decided to shoot rockets into my hometown of San Diego I would certainly hope the government would respond.
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Informative)
(1) Out of two hundred or so rockets shot "at" your city, how many were on a trajectory that they'd actually have landed "in" your city? Not many because they're so wildly inaccurate? Or most because your city is large?
When someone is shooting at you with a rifle, do you not take cover if the bullet will not hit you? How would you even know that the bullet will not hit you?
When a rocket is launched, seconds count. All population centers in the direction of the rocket's travel are warned by alarm. That means that we grab our children and run, no matter if we are working, eating, shitting, sleeping, or anything else.
The nature of this particular question seems very naive. I suppose that you haven't been shot at much!
(2) You mentioned 200 hundred rockets shot at your city. Is this the sum of the tallies of "two different kinds of boom" you mentioned, or does the number come from a different source?
The number comes from a few sources. The army says this many have been shot, the citizen guard says another number, Hamas says another number, we count another number, the neighbours count another number. You'll never get an exact count, but they are all within a few tens of percent from each other. Interestingly, the Hamas numbers seem to be the highest.
Is the low casualty rate better explained by a high intercept rate by Iron Dome? Or by the inaccuracy of the rockets coupled with the fact that statistically a high proportion of possible landing targets wouldn't hurt someone? Or by the fact that so many people in your city sensibly seek shelter? Or by the fact that the rockets are fairly rudimentary and don't pack much explosive and are unlikely to do damage unless they randomly score a hit almost on top of someone? I suspect that the other factors are dominant and the low casualty rate is therefore not a good guide to the effectiveness of Iron Dome.
The low casualty rate is undoubtedly due to the fact that so many people sensibly seek shelter. The high COP of the missiles mean nothing when shooting at civilians, and they do have between 40 - 90 KG of HE, with lots of nasty shrapnel. These are not the pop rockets that were being shot ten years ago. These are Iranian and Soviet designed weapons.
The Iron Dome is a factor for the low damage, but the alarms are what is saving lives. Excellent question!
If by sound you distinguish an IronDome hit from a rocket that hits the ground, do you assume that all "ground" hits land in your city?
We can tell by how bad the building shakes and how much damage was done (i.e. broken windows, which we have had at my house).
In your tallies, you said you heard 4-5 rockets hit the ground. How many did you hear intercepted by Iron Dome?
I'll ask my daughters for their current count next time the alarms go off. I'm pretty sure that they are both well above 150 by now. Each volley is a few rockets (6-12), and we've had between 4-8 volleys per day for the past week.
Do you think the range of your hearing hit-the-ground and hit-by-IronDome are equivalent?
I really doubt it. The Iron Dome intercepts are in the air and relatively far from the city, thus they are harder to hear. Plus, they have far less HE than do the rockets they are intercepting. I suppose that we may be under heavier fire than I've thought. I'm not sure that is a perspective that I wanted!
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I mention COP, that was meant to be CEP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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The nature of this particular question seems very naive. I suppose that you haven't been shot at much!
It's a semantic question to determine if your numbers for "shot at city" and "into city" are referring to the same thing, or to different things.
The [200] number comes from a few sources.
It sounds like, from what you say, the only number comparison that gives a meaningful idea of IronDome effectiveness is "count of audible intercepts" vs "count of audible impacts". All other numbers are incomensurable.
[You have heard+felt 4-5 rockets hit the ground] and [have heard] above 150 [aerial intercepts] by now
Those are the key numbers. You indicated that you believe that all of the aerial intercepts were of rockets that were going to head into your city. A
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I hereby declare this the best comment of the thread.
Re:Subject bait (Score:5, Interesting)
Stay on topic and discuss the technical aspects of the missile system, at least that is what should be discussed here.
The article itself hardly touches on the technical merits of the missile system. It mentions how there are hardly any public releases of technical aspect to discuss, and that the handful of images of the system in operation show intercept angles that are highly unlikely to be successful. The core argument of the article is that the whole situation is nothing more than a PR campaign on both sides.
Hamas fires inaccurate artillery rockets, unlikely to actually hit anything, at Israel, under the hopes Israel counter-attacks and causes lots of collateral damage that looks bad to international press.
Israel produces a defense system and makes precision counter-attacks to prove their technological and military prowess, and restraint in its use, to international press.
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Huh? What are you smoking? They're 100% gaurunteed to hit something as what goes up must come down. The problem they pose to Israel is that the something their going to hit is somewhere in a crowded city, meaning potential civilian casualties.
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Why? Surely analysing the mechanisms of society and their failure modes are far more deserving of the title "stuff that matters" than the mechanisms of systems used in the resulting mess. Or do you have some kind of ulterior motive to keep this conflict from bein
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Meta-discussions have to happen somewhere... where do you suggest?
Belief (Score:3)
The rockets being sent against Israel are small, sporadic, unguided, and mostly lack the range to hit major population centers (Tel Aviv). On the rare occasions it does hit a building, it won't destroy the building but will gut a room.
If the Iron dome is effective, great. If the belief of the people is it's effective, even better, especially for politicians in power. Pretty much what the article says.
Re:Belief (Score:5, Informative)
The rockets being sent against Israel are small, sporadic, unguided, and mostly lack the range to hit major population centers (Tel Aviv). On the rare occasions it does hit a building, it won't destroy the building but will gut a room.
I suspect that you're just trolling, but you might just be 10 years out of date.
Unguided missiles have no military value as they cannot be aimed at military targets, that is true. However, unguided missiles are best for terrorizing civilians, and of course those rockets have the range to hit major population centers. I've had about two hundred shot at my city in just the past week. The current rockets are variants of the Soviet Grad and Iranian Fagar 5 missiles. Plenty of range, unguided but with a COP of about a kilometer, and 40-90 KG of HE.
With the Iron Dome with only get a few hits in the city, and due to the alarms the population is in shelters when the rockets do hit. Without the alarms, my children would have been dead in November 2012 when a rocket landed were they were playing outside our building. Tens of apartments across the street from the blast were damaged very heavily, only to be rebuilt because they were in a building with undamaged apartments on the other side. About ten or twenty vehicles were destroyed. Nobody was even injured, because the whole city fled to shelters. No injuries, nothing on the news. We usually like it that way.
If the Iron dome is effective, great. If the belief of the people is it's effective, even better, especially for politicians in power. Pretty much what the article says.
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10 years out of date? I lived in Israel between 2009-2011, I was a block away from the Beersheva preschool hit in Dec 2008 which first taught me about what rocket attacks were like. It sounded like a suitcase dropping on the ground. I don't know what it's been like since 2011 first-hand, but Wikipedia/current news tells me it's closer to my recall then yours. >90% are Qassams, because they're cheap, the launchers look like irrigation equipment, and the launcher team can scatter immediately after firi
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It's better than nothing.
Any anyone who would make an issue of it has waay too much time on their hands.
It's hard (Score:4, Insightful)
It's difficult to find a technological solution to a combination of relatively minor disagreements as to the exact details of the God of Abraham, plus disagreement over land ownership.
Ted Postol very bias opinion. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ted Postol cannot be, even from being from MIT be considered a realable source for opinion. Postol has a large bias against anti-missle systems, which is down right dumb. The rockets are almost the size of small airplanes, but we don't consider anit-aircraft missles to be completely ineffecitive.
Re:Ted Postol very bias opinion. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't expect a critical appraisal from the vendor, do you? Take his, and everyone else's reporting with some degree of skepticism.
One notable fact that was tangentially mentioned is that one doesn't see any 'hits' in the media. I would think one would be able to see the effect of the missile intercepting the targets at least some of the time. Given the intense media coverage, one wonders. It's certainly possible that by the time the interceptor hits the target it's too small to visual, but there is one hell of a lot of energy involved. Kinetic energy often creates sparkly bits that can be seen.
It is also hard to argue that this ISN'T just one more aspect of the public relations game that is endemic to this conflict. Both sides (as is pointed out in TFA) engage in trying to get the other side to look mean and nasty. It's way more complicated than that.
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I have a video from my brother of two intercepts in about a 2 minute time span.
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Reality is there have been more than 600 hundred rockets lanched, 137 were calculated as a threat. With 0 fatalities, either the rockets are really crappy, Israel is incredibly lucky or no shit they are being intercepted.
Re:Ted Postol very bias opinion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the key thing for them is "cheap". They need to keep costing sub-$1k missiles in the ballpark of these Iron dome systems - the more, the better. They might as well just omit the warheads to save money and increase range. Every $50k shot Israel fires with those systems costs 25 Israelis' annual tax contribution to the IDF. Every $55m system they deploy costs 27.500 Israelis' IDF tax contributions.
Palestinians are poor, but they're not *that* poor that they can't leverage those kind of lopsided financial ratios.
why he thinks that (Score:2)
After reading the article, his reasoning is that the Iron Dome is mostly chasing the rockets from behind, and therefore cannot be effective, because a rocket cannot effectively be caught from behind, or from the side. Furthermore, previous anti-missile systems (the patriot) have had their success rate exaggerated.
I have no idea if that is reasonable, but it's why he thinks it.
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He "thinks that" because for him, and many many like him, a system that successfully neuters Hamas is very troubling; Iron Dome removes a pain point for Israel and a bargaining chip for Hamas, and Ted Postol and his NPR ilk don't like it. The fact that Israel has created the antidote for Hamas and their ballistic pipe bombs means Israel can exist relatively untroubled, and this reality is so disturbing to these people that they will grasp for and cling to any claim to the contrary.
In the long run they need
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Without knowing the actual flight characteristics of both the rockets and the missiles you can't really say if "tail chasing" is a viable interception approach or not.
Furthermore, previous anti-missile systems (the patriot) have had their success rate exaggerated.
It's likely to be harder
Propoganda runs both ways. (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA in the Bulletin: "Regular readers of the Bulletin are well aware of the long history of inflated claims of missile defense efficiency."
Regular readers are also well aware of the extreme and longstanding bias (running back to the 1960's) of the Bulletin's editors against missile defense (because even a partially effective defense weakens their case for nuclear disarmament, their true goal) and the long history of inflated "criticism" that purports to claim that it cannot possibly work. This... is just more of the same. They don't actually have any numbers or anything resembling hard data - just the opinion of expert(s) whose bias on the issue is well known.
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Well, you're right that missile defense leads to nuclear armament, but it doesn't really matter if it's effective. MIRV's and decoys can cheaply and easily neutralize any form of missile defense.
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Hard to tell if it's working. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the promotional video from Rafael [youtube.com], the system's maker. If the Iron Dome launchers are in a position to hit incoming rockets when they're still in boost phase, they're clearly effective. When they hit, the ascending rocket's flare disappears. Israel has Iron Dome launchers both forward postioned near Gaza, for boost phase defense, and near cities, for terminal defense. For terminal defense, it's harder to tell if they worked. The incoming rockets are just falling at that point, and success requires blowing up their warhead, not their rocket engine.
Videos show the missile's warhead exploding. That's triggered by a proximity fuse. There's a spray of shrapnel from the warhead; it doesn't have to be a direct hit. Whether that sets off the incoming rocket's warhead isn't visible from the videos of terminal defense.The Patriot missiles used in the Gulf war were able to hit incoming Scud missiles, but often didn't detonate the warhead.
What is the motivation? (Score:2)
I don't know why Israel would try to exaggerate the success of Iron Dome. I think that the opposite is true - the less successful the system is, the more sympathy people will have for Israelis under bombardment.
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I think in previous iterations journalists weren't particularly interested in the damage on the Israeli side.
So might as well calm the population, show the other side their attempts are futile and maybe make a few sales to India and South Korea along the way.
Critics like to criticize (Score:2)
how about an objective view? (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously, this is just bullshit on par with fox news.
"We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all," Postol said. "It—my guess is maybe [it hits a targeted missile] 5 percent of the time—could be even lower. ... And when you look—what you can do in the daytime—you can see the smoky contrail of each Iron Dome interceptor, and you can see the Iron Domes trying to intercept the artillery rockets side on and from behind. In those geometries, the Iron Dome has no chance, for all practical purposes, of destroying the artillery rocket."
"for sure," really? how about some actual numbers instead of speculation?
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He can look at shaky videos some people shot on their phone of rocket flares in the distance and make all the assumptions he wants but if you look at the actual impacts, This is what an unintercepted impact looks like [ynet.co.il] and This is what a piece of an intercepted rocket that landed a few hundred meters from my house looks like [ynet.co.il] and the vast majority of impacts are of the latter variety.
Not that a hunk of metal falling on falling from the sky is nothing to sneeze at, but the shrapnel doesn't seem to have quite t
No there there... (Score:2)
This is why I have a tendency to dislike "skeptics".. from my experience they too often tend to commit same errors in reasoning as their opposition. Only by virtue of operating from a safer default position do they end up being on the right side of objective reality.
How does one ramble on about lack of data driving a position and concurrently while admitting ignorance and having no data yourself go on to commit the very same error?
If you want to point out news articles on the effectiveness of Iron dome are
I'm in Israel - I can HEAR the intercepts (Score:5, Informative)
I'm in Israel with my family this month. We've had to go to shelters several times over the past week (f- you very much, Hamas). You can hear the difference between successful Iron Dome intercepts vs. the rockets that land (most, presumably, in unpopulated areas). The system is working and saving lives; that's good enough for me.
Addressing the Cost and Nature of a SCUD (Score:2)
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Almost. They never finished it. The Nazis were able to around it.
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They remembered too well what had happened 20 years earlier and prepared to fight WWI again. Right down to the incompetent leadership sitting in chateaus sipping brandy.
Plan B had a punchline: 'Table for 250,000 misure?'
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Neither.
I learned about the wall on a History Channel documentary.
Nobody was an idiot back then, everyone knew Hitler was a problem. The wall wasn't finished because France was exhausted in resources from WW I. French politicians and people simply didn't want to pay for it.
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Re:Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
No, in recent history, these conflicts are resolved by pressure from the international community. It's how apartheid in South Africa ended, to a great extent.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher referring to Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist" and his party as a "terrorist organization". It turned out they were dead wrong. Last year, the philosophical progeny of Reagan and Thatcher hailed Mandela as a hero.
History is not going to be kind to the government of Israel in the first decades of the 21st century (if not longer).
It didn't have to be this way.
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Yeah. And now South Africa has gone from being a nuclear power with a space program to a third world shit hole that's mostly known for it's murder rate. I don't think history is going to be very kind to the Enlightened(TM), either.
See Desmond Tutu's comments. [youtube.com]
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No, you're both wrong. In recent years, these conflicts are never resolved at all. They fester forever.
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You keep using that word. I don't think that it means what you think that it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
http://allenbwest.com/2014/04/... [allenbwest.com]
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Did you read that Wikipedia article you linked to? It makes a pretty good case that it's apartheid:
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So, not investing in companies that support the Israeli government is exactly the same as the Holocaust?
That's reasonable.
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Sadly Israel really needs to be allowed to take more offensive action or else things will simply continue in this steady-state for the foreseeable future.
Their quarry is systematically marginalized and trapped in a small area. A concentration camp if you will. The only thing that can be done to "take more offensive action" is to ramp up the current extermination program.
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I think that's an excellent solution. Shame it's not really final, though.
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I think at this point the Palestinians are rather like the Black Knight of Monty Python. There's nothing you can do short of killing every last one that won't result in the remainders claiming "we was robbed" and declaring Holy Jihad in the name of Muhammed and Allah.
This Allah character is a weird dude in Islam. He is supposed to be so other that he only communicates to humans through angels and them mostly in dreams...which of course is only tailor made for every two-bit Imam and Mullah to declare a visit
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It's not defense, it's a rampage. Almost a genocide.
You should remember that Israel (which have one of the best armies in the world) is fighting against a ethnical group without army.
If anyone else in the world did that, We could call it a massacre, a butchery or even a genocide.
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Palestinians have an army...
Not regular army but a terrorism/guerilla kind of army...
If you count the prices of the missiles launched at Israel, you'd have enough to get food to most of the Palestinians, to repair most of the buildings, to create medic centers, schools, ...
And they prefer to create martyrs than go to a safe place when Israelian raids come... They want to get the whole world destroying Israel... They want to use US against Israel...
They prefer to choose war, to kill the Jews that are though
Re:I've always thought that the best way for Israe (Score:5, Informative)
f you count the prices of the missiles launched at Israel, you'd have enough to get food to most of the Palestinians, to repair most of the buildings, to create medic centers, schools, ...
Their not allowed to repair the buildings as concrete is on the list of goods that Israel prevents from being imported:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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This reasoning, on the face of it, is absolutely ridiculous.
Because one side is very advanced militarily and the other side is not, then the side that is very advanced needs to let the other side have a fairer fight? No. Not at all.
A mugger comes at you with a knife. If you have a gun, that's not fair, you need to let the mugger with the knife stab you a few times before you pull the trigger?
Or let's say the other side has a stone, and is perfectly happy to hit you over the head repeatedly with it until you
Re:I've always thought that the best way for Israe (Score:5, Insightful)
On some other planet where the IDF isn't wiping out 100 Palestinians for every dead Israeli? Where the United States doesn't praise every cluster bomb dropped on Gaza as Israel "defending itself"? Where the Palestinians are on of the world's top military powers and the Zionists are a bunch of unarmed refugees?
Just another day in this alternate reality built on bald-faced lies you guys have constructed for yourselves....
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Hmmm...so we are to attribute some sort of ethereal "values" to encouraging your kids to whacked on the basis that someone wrote down in a book over 1000 years ago that they'd go to Heaven for it? Sooooo...what's the point of the kiddies being here in the first place. How come Allah doesn't just whack their asses at birth and cut right to the chase?
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Like I said, their values are different than yours and mine!
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There's really nowhere else to put this, so here goes:
Thank you dotancohen for all your comments. They are insightful, mature, and, perhaps most importantly, civil.
As a general on the discussion so far, I find it informative that the most vitriolic comments directed against Israel and Jews were posted anonymously; the posters are well aware that their remarks are defamatory and have no appropriate place in civil discourse.
Per the preceding discussion, the staggeringly different perspectives on life, the aft
Re:I've always thought that the best way for Israe (Score:5, Insightful)
According to yourself, you value an personal ancestral connection to the land [slashdot.org]. And you also said you think it's the same for Hamas. So please don't try to twist things into a "good vs. evil" or even "sane vs. insane" narrative. It's not.
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+5 inciteful!
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It seem more that they will blame "David" every time a rock gets thrown. Some of these rockets are being fired from Lebanon yet Hamas, rather than Hezbollah, being blamed. Co-operation between Shia and Sunni not being likely either. Those launcing the rockets are also being refered to as "Hamas supporters". Rather implying "With friends like these who needs enemies".
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Even mention conservatives and you get modded until oblivion.
As a moderate conservative, I think your post is stupid and ignorant. Stop watching Fox News, leave your mother's basement, and visit the big blue room with the yellow light bulb.