Putting Iron Dome into perspective
Technology cannot hermetically seal our skies.
Within a few months, batteries of anti-missile missiles are to be positioned in vulnerable Gaza-vicinity communities to protect them against indiscriminate rocketry fired from the Hamas bastion. The various towns are already competing hard to make sure they will be adequately covered.
Earlier in the week, it passed its final operational tests with flying colors, but real life is a whole other opera (as Israelis may remember from the disappointing performance, to put it mildly, of the Patriots in the First Gulf War).
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i candidly admits that the Iron Dome cannot intercept all Gazan rockets and that Israeli communities will remain menaced. Nevertheless he is confident that 80 percent of incoming projectiles can be foiled. But can they? Even the optimistic Vilna’i notes that Iron Dome cannot be deployed everywhere and would have to be installed according to “operational requirements.”
The Kassams and assorted primitive hardware, however, are highly maneuverable, and there can be scant intelligence as to when someone will fire them or from where.
Hence, unless every inch of the western
Last but not least, there’s the sticky issue of footing the bill. The popular mantra is that no price is too high to save lives, which – considered strictly on the moral plane – is indisputable. Keep in mind, though, that it costs next to nothing to manufacture a Kassam and that Hamas may have many scores of thousands of crude rockets stored in its arsenals.
One single Iron Dome anti-missile missile costs $100,000.
Clearly, firing against any flying object from
The prevailing counter-argument is that only Kassams that threaten defined communities would be downed. But such calculations are far from foolproof.
It isn’t always possible to forecast where a Kassam will hit. If not every
IT IS imperative that Israelis are keenly aware of all of the above, in order to shatter the dangerous delusion that a magical, defensive panacea exists to the Kassam and mortar threat from
Let there be no mistake – technologically, again, the Iron Dome is a stellar achievement that holds great promise. It may fall short of constituting a major deterrent, yet it could help render the Kassam a less attractive mode of terrorizing Israelis. But its contribution to securing
The Iron Dome underscores
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