From the first moment that the Palestinian resistance factions began their military response to what happened in the Al-Aqsa Mosque by the Israeli occupation authorities, a few days before the end of the month of Ramadan, voices rose - inside and outside Israel - confirming the accuracy of the "Iron Dome" defense system that It is operated by the occupying power, and its ability to repel the vast majority of rockets coming from Gaza.
Basically, Iron Dome (1) is an advanced missile defense system that starts from a radar that is activated if any missile launches within 5-70 km from a point whose center is the area covered by the dome, while the radar sends information to a processing unit that studies the missile's trajectory, type, etc. Whether it is heading to a populated area or not, and through artificial intelligence algorithms, it decides whether the incoming missile is worth intercepting or not.
The Iron Dome system uses cost-benefit analysis to make a decision, so that the priority is to prevent human losses, and when it makes its decision, an anti-missile launches from one of the Iron Dome batteries carefully distributed in separate areas within the city to be secured, with a length of about three meters and a width equal to 15 centimeters. It targets the incoming missile.
The basic claim, which the Israeli occupation authorities have adopted since the war on Gaza in 2012, and is still exporting it propaganda to all countries of the world as an unprecedented military and technical victory, is that the efficiency of the system (2) exceeds 84%, meaning that out of every hundred missiles The dome begins to track, it successfully intercepts at least 84 missiles.
The military operation referred to as the killing of Ahmed al-Jabari, deputy commander-in-chief of al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, began as a result of an air strike, and lasted eight days, during which the resistance factions intensified their missile attacks on Israeli cities, and launched a total of about 1500 rockets at Israel, and more than A hundred rockets inside Gaza itself.
In the 2014 war on Gaza, which lasted nearly 50 days and erupted against the background of the popular anger that followed the kidnapping and torture of the Palestinian child Muhammad Abu Khdeir at the hands of a group of settlers, Israeli propaganda developed to say that the capabilities of the dome exceeded (3) beyond a reasonable doubt by 90%. Supporters of Iron Dome portrayed this as a great development of a project that started less than five years ago.
During that battle, the Palestinian resistance factions fired nearly 5,000 rockets, but only 960 of them were within the scope of the Iron Dome, while the rest of them fell in uninhabited areas, and according to Israeli sources, the Dome intercepted 735 rockets, and 225 rockets fell in areas within the scope of the Dome. 70 of these missiles, the Dome tried to deal with, but failed, and the rest completely evaded them.
This prompted some people interested in the field of military science to say that the lack of Israeli losses indicates that Iron Dome is the most effective and most tested missile shield the world has ever seen (4). But although you will hear and read these allegations frequently on social media and in foreign media outlets, especially that they receive tremendous media support, you will not hear or read much about the other opinion that questions the massive propaganda about the effectiveness of the Israeli system.
The first person to suggest that the numbers announced by the Israeli authorities may be incorrect was a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States of America, called Theodore Postol, who specializes in engineering sciences and is interested in his work on engineering matters related to national security.
After the war on Gaza in 2012 and during the height of Israeli propaganda, Postol came out to say (5) that the declared rates regarding the effectiveness of Iron Dome are incorrect, and that the rates of intercepting rockets coming from Gaza are less than 10%.
This image is simultaneously mesmerizing and horrifying, capturing the dynamics of modern asymmetric warfare in one snapshot.
Iron Dome is the world's most sophisticated short range missile defense systems.
But Hamas is testing whether quantity has a quality all of its own.
pic.twitter.com/rsU80xIg8g
- Vipin Narang (@NarangVipin) May 14, 2021
Postol followed a large number of videos and pictures that citizens of the Israeli occupation state presented on social media for a moment when Iron Dome missiles were intercepted by other missiles coming from Gaza, and then he studied them from a different point of view, as the engineering professor believes that it is not just about intercepting A war missile, but you must meet it head-to-head.
In order to be able to destroy a missile, it is necessary to destroy the explosive head of the missile, which is in its front, but if it is hit by a side strike, you may drop it, but it will still be explosive once it reaches the ground. Postol focused especially on the so-called "laser fuse", It is a laser beam that comes out from the head of the interceptor missile in all directions, and as soon as it passes next to a missile coming from Gaza, the dome missile explodes and detonates the missile coming with it.
Postol's calculations indicated (6) that it is rare for us to reach the point where the two missiles stand so that the head of the missile coming from Gaza is within range of detonation, which led to the conclusion that the large number of missiles that were dropped by the Iron Dome system cannot be calculated However, it was a risk that was removed because it would fall inside the dome's field and explode on the ground, and from here it was concluded that the real result of the effectiveness of the Iron Dome does not reach even 10%.
Postol is not the only skeptic about the effectiveness of the Hebrew defense system, as he has been endorsed by many experts (7) such as Richard M. Lloyd, a former warhead expert at Raytheon, and others within the Israeli occupation army itself, such as Reuven Bedatzur, a former combat pilot in the occupation army And a supporter of laser-based defense systems, and Mordechai Schaefer, a winner of the Israeli Defense Award, all of them rated the effectiveness of this system between 5% to a maximum of 40%.
At that point, the current in favor of the effectiveness of Iron Dome responds that the results on the ground can be judged in its favor, and at that point they compare the average damage rates achieved by enemy missiles (resistance missiles) during wars before and after the use of Iron Dome, specifically during the Second Lebanon War. 2006 compared to the two military operations against Gaza in 2012 and 2014.
But even that argument lacks precision (8), because if we put one of the military operations, which is the war on Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009, during which the resistance factions fired hundreds of rockets at targets inside the occupation state, the equation seems to vibrate. The results are not always directed towards minimizing the damage, which means that there may be other reasons besides the strength of the Iron Dome system, such as the type of rockets fired in every battle of the war's sides (Hezbollah from the side of Lebanon, and the resistance factions in Palestine, regardless of their arming) .
On the other hand, Postol and Lloyd (9) suggest that the reduced death toll caused by rockets from Gaza, or anywhere else, has nothing to do with Iron Dome's capability, but primarily because of the early warning system that tells people on the ground that A missile is traveling in their direction, as are the system of shelters that have been arranged so that personnel can easily reach them within tens of seconds of warning.
During World War II, one of the factors that greatly reduced the damage in several English cities was the increase in the number of seconds available after warning citizens, before any missile fell on the city, and the capabilities of this system based on early warning in the occupation state, which is affiliated with the Iron Dome, were developed so that This period reached 15 seconds (10) in cities adjacent to the Gaza Strip, and more than 90 seconds in distant cities such as Jerusalem or areas such as Beersheba.
In addition to all of this, even if the success of the Iron Dome system is confirmed, there are existing damages related to the nature of the system itself, which fails to deal with certain types of missiles, especially (11) short-range missiles (5-7 kilometers), as Iron Dome cannot To deal effectively with this type of projectile, which leaves the cities of the occupation located on the Gaza borders threatened.
Even if the Iron Dome succeeds in repelling the attack by 90%, as Israel claims, the solution will be the firing of more rockets by the resistance. Yatf Shabir (12), a specialist in military sciences from Tel Aviv University, believes that there is a maximum, It is not announced, due to the capabilities of this system to endure, and if this limit is exceeded, all missiles will pass to the depth of the occupied territories.
In addition to that, launching only one missile from the Iron Dome system costs about 50 thousand dollars, compared to only a few hundreds of dollars for the missiles coming from Gaza. Therefore, the two thousand missiles coming from Gaza, even if they do not cause significant damage, will undoubtedly affect On the defense budget of the occupying country.
After all this cost, the missiles coming from Gaza are still effective regardless of whether they hit their targets or not, because the citizen inside the occupation state finds himself forced to leave what is in his hands with the first warning and flee immediately to one of the shelters, as well as there The airlines need to be stopped throughout the battle, so the "psychological", and possibly economic, damage remains great.
All this and we are talking about a very sophisticated system that uses artificial intelligence mechanisms to confront the Palestinian resistance factions' missiles, which are usually locally manufactured or have weak capabilities, so what if you know that researchers in this range do not expect things to continue as such? One day, the resistance factions will reach more advanced missile technologies, whether by following complex and unpredictable paths, or by using missiles that are able to maneuver, which are already in place but still reach their hands at some point.
Of course, we can understand the reason for the exaggeration in the allegations coming from the Israeli occupation state, as the matter does not stop only at the borders of the attempt to terrorize the resistance factions, but also has political purposes such as displaying the technical force over the countries of the region, and reassuring citizens within the occupying state, as well as an economic purpose, where a state operates The occupation sold this system to several other countries, and countries such as Azerbaijan, Romania, India and the United States had already concluded agreements with the Israeli occupation state to obtain it.
In the end, the Iron Dome is a superior piece of technology and may witness great development in the future. This is something that no one will deny. It has contributed to reducing the losses of the occupying power, but its alleged "tremendous" success is doubtful, because it depends in large part on the weak resources of the factions. The Palestinian resistance, and the accounts of some specialists in this area cast doubt primarily on the Israeli figures about its effectiveness, and in all cases, everyone agrees that, no matter how strong it is, it will remain a temporary solution that will quickly be overcome with the development of the military capabilities of the resistance fighters.
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Resources:
Israel's Iron Dome, explained by an expert
Israel's Iron Dome: Doubts over success rate
Operation Protective Edge
Iron Dome: A Missile Shield That Works
An Explanation of the Evidence of Weaknesses in the Iron Dome Defense System
Previous source
How Many Rockets Has Iron Dome Really Intercepted?
As missiles fly, a look at Israel's Iron Dome interceptor
Israel's Iron Dome proves successful against Gaza rockets
Future Challenges for Israel's Iron Dome Rocket Defenses
Lessons from the Iron Dome