Video shows rocket attack on Israeli jeep patrol από reuters
One of the most significant things about the current white settler aggression against Gaza, Palestine and the resistance to it is the IRANIAN MADE FAJR MISSILE FIRED AT AND LANDING NEAR tEL aVIV (claimed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas armed wings)! Lets see Tunis, Cairo, Ankara or Doha give Gaza better missiles than that if they think they are the standard bearers of independence of the region! Jokers.
Anyway, this is a historic advancement of the Palestinian resistance, and shows that Hamas have still not yet totally capitulated and still have strategic links to Hizbullah and Iran, this strategic link is in danger due to Hamas' own foolishness, but it will be lost on NO ONE that it was an IRANIAN missile that got the resistance missile to tel aviv.
This week defense officials made a plethora of creative claims to explain why the Iron Dome anti-rocket system was having a hard time intercepting the barrages of Grad rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The following are some of those explanations, as reported in the media.
A battery was stationed in Rehovot, so it did not intercept the rockets fired at Ashdod. The weather made identification difficult. The Grad launching positions were walled and dug in. The launching cells have been trained in new technologies. The radar wasn't working because of calibration problems. Hasty positioning led to mistakes.
These explanations are nothing but media spin, excuses in an attempt to throw sand in the public's face. They are reminiscent of a lawyer's claims: My client was not at the scene of the crime, and if it's proven he was, I'll claim he was completely drunk. And if it's proven he was not drunk, I'll claim that his legs were broken. And if it's proven he was standing on his feet, I'll claim he was having an epileptic fit. But all this can't conceal the naked truth.
In the past few days about 30 rockets have been fired into Israel. The two Iron Dome batteries intercepted between four and five rockets, a success rate of about 15 percent. By anyone's standards this is a very low rate, and it certainly contradicts the great promises by the Defense Ministry, the system's manufacturer Rafael and the project's head administrator, Yossi Drucker.
At the rate the excuses are being manufactured, the Defense Ministry and Rafael people might well blame the former defense minister, Labor MK Amir Peretz. He was the spirit behind the strategic decision that we have to protect the exposed home front and gave Rafael about NIS 1 billion to develop the system.
We have to admit the truth: Iron Dome's ability to intercept rockets is limited. In August five rockets were fired at Be'er Sheva in a single barrage. Iron Dome intercepted three of them. Two got through, killed one person and damaged property. This week, Islamic Jihad released a video showing that a barrage of 10 rockets was fired - although we can't rule out that the video was a forgery, taken elsewhere, perhaps in Libya.
The many rockets fired at Israel make life very difficult for Iron Dome. The more rockets fired, the more acute the problem. It's safe to assume that Hamas engineers, helped by Iranian experts, are constantly looking for the system's Achilles' heel.
Praise is due to the Rafael engineers for developing in a very short time an innovative system to meet Israel's security needs. They deserve compliments for the development of Tamir, the intercepting rocket, the fruit of a unique and advanced technology.
The problem is that Rafael's spokesmen, the Defense Ministry and the lobbyists raised Iron Dome's bar of expectations too high. To ward off the criticism during the development phase, they promised all sorts of great things. They stirred the hope, which became an illusion, that the system would supply a maximum answer for the needs of Sderot and the Gaza area, needs for which the system was developed.
But this was not the end of the matter. These people are continuing to mislead the public with statements that it's impossible to provide hermetic protection. Ostensibly these are moderate, balanced and correct statements indicating that they are aware of the gap between the promises and the performance, and that it's impossible to achieve 100 percent success. But the truth is that the protection level provided by Iron Dome is very far from the impression created by these statements.
Iron Dome provides only partial protection, to put it mildly. It's good that Israel has the system. We have to produce more batteries and deploy them to protect more communities in the south. But the public must come to terms with the bitter reality that Iron Dome is not the be-all and end-all.
Also, the people at the Defense Ministry should seriously consider other possibilities for defending the home front, like the laser canon. It's equally important to urgently approve budgets for fortifying buildings and constructing shelters, perhaps even at the price of postponing production of one Iron Dome battery. For the price of one battery - more than NIS 200 million - shelters and safe rooms could be built to protect 30,000 people.
From the Iron Dome's performance so far we can draw another painful conclusion. Both the Arrow 2 missile defense system and the future model, the Arrow 3, will have similar problems against rockets and will have a hard time handling the threat of Iran's Shihab missile.
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Iron Dome CRAM launcher near the town of Sderot. Photo: wiki commons.
Of the 86 rockets that were launched from Gaza into Israel in recent days, only 8 were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system. This appears to be a relatively small success rate when considering the billions of dollars that went into its development. The Algemeiner wanted to know why, despite the plaudits and praise, we are still seeing images of destruction and suffering at the hands of missiles being launched from Gaza. IDF spokesperson, Captain Eytan Buchman, explained.
On how the system works: “Because of the quantity of rockets fired it would be unrealistic to try to intercept every rocket. So what it does is it projects where the rocket is expected to land based on the trajectory of the rocket. So if we identify that a rocket is going to land in a populated area, or some other strategic site we initiate the interception process. This process happens within 15-30 seconds. So within 15-30 seconds we have to identify a rocket launch, figure out a trajectory and then figure out the best path on which to send an interceptor missile.”
On why rockets are breaching Iron Dome: “Nobody expects a 100% success rate. These rockets are launched at such a rapid pace. There’s no air defense system that is capable of doing that. Iron Dome is one component in an over-arcing package that we use to stop the rocket fire. 8 rockets being intercepted out of 80 is a success. I don’t think that’s an injustice to the system. When we deployed the system we knew it wouldn’t be 100% successful and you judge a system based on the expectations of that system.”
On whether or not it has been a success: “The first missile intercepted by Iron Dome was on April 7, 2011. It’s a very young system. We only have four batteries deployed. So for a system that’s only about a year and a half old we still have a lot to learn from it, a lot to tweak. And once we increase the number of batteries and the quality of batteries it will show itself to be more and more effective. The fact that were continually able to increase its abilities means it’s a system that’s paying off.”
On Criticism of its cost: “A lot of people don’t think the cost makes sense. The qassam rockets being fired cost $800, while the interceptor missiles cost $35,000 but the cost of the damage of a hit is far worse than that. So just today those 8 rockets could have landed and killed Israeli civilians. I think that justifies the system itself. And with these things as the systems are perfected the cost comes down.”
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