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 alarms, we had the bomb shelters then, but still, the rockets destroyed and killed.
In the current conflict, almost zero dead, almost zero buildings destroyed, and this is while Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets and to a far more densely populated areas than ever targeted by either Hamas OR Hezbollah(Tel Aviv, Rishon Leziyon where most of Israeli population and commerce is).
There is a reason why Hezbollah and Hamas equipped themselves with tens of thousands of rockets, because it used to work, but not anymore.
I've even had a discussion previously today with my dad that if accuracy of Iron Dome would increase to 99%, we could actually turn off the siren system and maybe just ignore Hamas rockets, keep living normally, thus preventing the need to use offensive military force and prevent casualties on both sides.
Unfortunately we've recently learned that 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. We've already discovered ~15 such tunnels, and there is much talk that we need an "Iron Dome" for discovering tunnels in the very special geological structure of the sand around Gaza.
I personally need an Iron Dome for my soul, after seeing so many pictures of Israelis and Gazans dead, having difficult conversations with my kids and having a difficult time building my startup when all I can think of is this war. Fucking war.
(While writing this I was interrupted due to 3 rockets shot at Tel Aviv, 2 intercepted, 1 hit a house, the first time for central Israel in this war.. the irony).
> 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?
"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."
"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."
"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.
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).
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
You also may be giving too much credit to Hamas and Islamic Jihad's ability to aim rockets at the intended targets. Plenty of the time they hit the middle of nowhere, or they've actually even hit Palestinian-dominated areas (Hebron and Bethlehem) [1][2]
In many situations, it makes far more sense to save the Iron Dome counter-missles.
I dont think that the rockets are aimed to be most efficient but you could make the same argument by saying that the rockets are only intercepted if the iron dome system thinks they will hit a densely populated area.
Interesting analysis. If the Iron Dome is mere security theater then it makes it makes sense that the IDF won't simply sit back and let Hamas fire away until they run out of rockets. Enough property damage may make Israelis' behind the Iron Dome realize that it's only the shelters that offer real safety.
I'm curious about Hamas' choice in rockets though. Would larger rockets present as easier targets for the Iron Dome? If so, then the Iron Dome does indeed serve an important purpose by limiting Hamas to rockets small enough to be harmless to shelters. If not, then why would Hamas not use rockets large enough to penetrate a shelter?
Finally, let's assume the ineffectiveness of the Iron Dome was commonly known. Given the sharp increase in IDF casualties after the ground invasion started, would it still have made sense to invade if there was no fear that Israelis might lose confidence in the Iron Dome?
> then it makes it makes sense that the IDF won't simply sit back and let Hamas fire away until they run out of rockets
As many other posters have shown, the analysis is incorrect.
And Israel did in fact wait a while and just let them shoot. They escalated to a ground phase because of terror tunnels - missiles are a lower priority. You can tell because of where Israel is targeting during the ground phase - they have not gone deep into Gaza, but are staying right near the border where the tunnels start.
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 -- e.g., a rocket fired toward the Negev is much lower priority than a rocket fired at Tel Aviv.
On another note, I think that as programmers it's an interesting exercise to speculate as to the nature of the computer systems Iron Dome employs in order to mitigate attacks. AFAIK, Iron Dome rockets are only fired when high-value areas are targeted or there is a high probability of success. Can you imagine the kinds of online learning models we employ nowadays, being able to evaluate a set of inputs in <10s ? Even a complex Bayesian inference algorithm that could solve for a probable strike area in that short time with reasonable accuracy is incredible.
As colloquial evidence, a family member of mine recently posted a photo of Iron Dome intercepting a rocket almost directly over his home. So maybe it's not that accurate or that effective, but when it does work it's worth almost every dollar or shekel spent.
> I've always heard the Iron Dome rockets are stupid expensive to fire
I'm not sure that's really true. Estimates range from $20,000 to $60,000 - that's cheap compared to the cost of a single hit on a building (which the Israeli government pays for). (And never even mind the human and economic costs.)
>>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.
>>Firing a dud is pointless since the cost of the rocket is the same
If this is the case. Then in the presence of Iron dome, only impact those rockets have is in scaring away people.
It hardly makes any sense to fire a barrage of rockets in this case. A more optimal strategy is fire them a few at a time spread out over a period of time.
You are forgetting that Israel [tries to] destroys the launcher and the attacker after every launch. So every rocket attack is basically a suicide attack.
I think that's the main cause of most of the civilian death - Israel doesn't have time to check for civilians in the area, they counter attack almost instantly.
So they'll launch a bunch while they can before they die.
I don't think you can really comprehend the level of hate going on there that would make someone suicide and take civilians with him for even a tiny chance of killing an Israeli.
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.
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.
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.
Speaking as layman, it sounds plausible that a hit on the back would work while the target missile is ascending, but not when it's already descending towards the target.
I'm far from being an expert, so everything I say could be wrong and I am aware of this! But I assume that because of wind influence, etc, I suspect that a rocket needs to have manoeuvring capabilities to reach a specific target, even on their descend. I also assume that works with little wings on its side and GPS. Destroying those wings or the GPS might be enough that it lands tens or hundreds meters aside from it's designated targets. Maybe even kilometres, but I really don't know enough about that to say.
Changing the trajectory so that the rocket accidentally hits a civillian target instead of the designated millitary one night not be considered a success by everyone..
There's no evidence to speak of in the article--just calculations speculating that the success rate should be low. At best, it calls for Israel to produce evidence that the system is indeed working.
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.
If it's not working, that's a pretty bad sign for the US ballistic missile defense system. I'm assuming it's easier to hit a Mach 3 Grad than a Mach 20 ICBM
Out of interest, what is the trigger mechanism for the rockets warhead? Would an Iron Dome missile have a higher success rate if it had a strong enough blast radius that meant it only needed to explode near an incoming Hama's missile, rather than actually having to hit the warhead directly?
Another Israeli here. I watched those intercepts taking place over my head. Add to that the numerous YouTube videos of such intercepts and let's call the lot "experimental evidence". That should trump the article's theoretical analysis imo :)
technology-wise the thing like Iron Dome could have and should have been deployed 20 years ago. Today the missile based defense system against short range relatively slow missiles is becoming obsolete (and thus whether the Iron Dome missiles are effective is becoming not that important) with coming up of the systems like this http://defense-update.com/20131214_us-army-tests-high-power-...
I've seen quotes that suggest the missiles cost between 20 and 100,000 dollars. How is it suitanable to continue using the Iron Dome at such a high cost?
In the USA, a human life is typically valued (for risk analysis etc) at $5M or so.
Break even happens if a single missile would prevent a death 2% of the time. That excludes the psychological costs, property damage, and other possible negative results.
This has been calculated a number of times using various methods but it usually averages in the $5-10 million range, talking about the practical cost of someone dying.
Well, if you want to look at it purely from a money perspective it might not be sustainable but it sure is cheaper than having an impact in a populated area.
Costs of a hit in populated area:
- Loss of life and productivity
- Hospitalization of injured
- Covering material damage
- Large disruption of life
> How is it suitanable to continue using the Iron Dome at such a high cost?
Hamas is going to make a Soviet Union. Like the SU back in Cold War times, Hamas doesn't realize they've entered a vicious money-spending circle they cannot win.
The only reason why Hamas isn't dead and bankrupt yet is that there is actual war going on and the population will support them until death.
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.
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).
Sounds like the Israeli government has joined the American government in their favorite pastime: covering and manipulating. Just like 9/11, the moon landing and the JFK "assassination", here is yet ANOTHER proof that our governments are making up stories to keep us docile and complacent. Well done, Israel. Well done.
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 alarms, we had the bomb shelters then, but still, the rockets destroyed and killed.
In the current conflict, almost zero dead, almost zero buildings destroyed, and this is while Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets and to a far more densely populated areas than ever targeted by either Hamas OR Hezbollah(Tel Aviv, Rishon Leziyon where most of Israeli population and commerce is).
There is a reason why Hezbollah and Hamas equipped themselves with tens of thousands of rockets, because it used to work, but not anymore.
I've even had a discussion previously today with my dad that if accuracy of Iron Dome would increase to 99%, we could actually turn off the siren system and maybe just ignore Hamas rockets, keep living normally, thus preventing the need to use offensive military force and prevent casualties on both sides.
Unfortunately we've recently learned that 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. We've already discovered ~15 such tunnels, and there is much talk that we need an "Iron Dome" for discovering tunnels in the very special geological structure of the sand around Gaza.
I personally need an Iron Dome for my soul, after seeing so many pictures of Israelis and Gazans dead, having difficult conversations with my kids and having a difficult time building my startup when all I can think of is this war. Fucking war.
(While writing this I was interrupted due to 3 rockets shot at Tel Aviv, 2 intercepted, 1 hit a house, the first time for central Israel in this war.. the irony).