Israel's Iron Dome A Missile Defense Success as Obama gets "flexible" with Russia

True Conservatives on Twitter ^ | November 20, 2012

[raptor22]

Security: As Hamas launches rockets toward Israeli population centers, Tel Aviv's investment in missile defense passes its acid test, destroying the vast majority. The U.S., meanwhile, is moving in just the opposite direction.

On Sunday, Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system successfully shot down two Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets aimed at the heart of Tel-Aviv by Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. It was just one of many such interceptions by what is now the world's only battle-tested missile defense system.

The "Fajr" (Dawn) series are mobile-launched, unguided, solid-fuel artillery rockets developed by Iran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war with the likely help of Russia and China. It is believed that in 2001 Iran first supplied Fajr-5 rockets to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. And now Hamas has them.

The Israeli Defense Ministry deployed an upgraded Iron Dome missile battery in the Gush Dan area in central Israel on Saturday morning. Roughly equivalent to the U.S. Patriot missile defense system, the battery is the fifth Iron Dome system operational in Israel.

In total, Palestinians fired 740 rockets toward the Jewish state in the first few days of Operation Pillar of Defense, which began last Wednesday. They ranged from the Fajr-5 to the unsophisticated Katyusha rockets, but only around 30 of those landed in built-up areas.

Iron Dome intercepted 245 projectiles in all, maintaining a 90% intercept rate. Only 27 of the rockets, about 4%, landed in urban areas. Iron Dome batteries are not deployed in every area where rockets have been fired and don't try to intercept those headed for open areas.

[Gaffer]

Roughly equivalent to the U.S. Patriot missile defense system, the battery is the fifth Iron Dome system operational in Israel.

Hardly. The Patriot radar is a DECADES old design from the 70s being a space fed phased array with different feeds for transmit and receive meaning the phase shifters have to refocus the beam to the TX or RX feed. What does this mean? It means that it is not and cannot be a pulse doppler radar which is a big limitation when trying to detect, coherently integrate and hit smaller targets. The Israeli IRON DOME radar is an AESA, active electronically scanned array. Very likely PD and very likely much much faster than the Patriot radar.

From the articles on the missiles, they're pretty damned good too. Then the job lies with the radar to find the missiles, and the ID is probably much much better than a Patriot radar.....

The statement was very ill informed.

[Reaganite Republican]

Well, if nothing else everybody can see now why the Russians want us to get rid of ours

[buwaya]

The big question is whether Iron Dome can deal with Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles such as what Iran might use with chemical or nuclear warheads. These will come in at much higher velocities than what they are lobbing from Gaza.

Short range low speed rockets are a relatively minor threat unless shot off in truly huge numbers - thousands a day - or with chemicals. And to shoot down such numbers may be a losing proposition as the cost per round for Iron Dome would be much higher than for the attacker, and an increase in capacity would be far more expensive. Its easy to swamp such a system with cheap rockets. The Gaza guys are small-time terrorists and haven’t got a lot of ammo. A proper enemy government would have plenty more.

There aren’t too many places in the world that could use an Iron Dome good only to shoot down short range rockets. South Korea may want to look into it to defend Seoul, but the economics may be troublesome.