How Israel's Iron Dome Intercepts Incoming Rockets | Hacker News Reader

How Israel's Iron Dome Intercepts Incoming Rockets

m.nbcnews.com

9 pointseplanit4 comments

This is little more than a puff-piece. Zero technical details, aside from the fact that the Hamas rockets are unguided, slow and World War 2 technology.

If true, the 85% intercept rate is pretty miraculous compared to (older) US technology. But even after reading the article (which does have the title given on HN), we're left wondering "how?"

You have a point. Here is the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome, although it does not have significant technical detail.

Maybe the linked piece is best regarded as a flag that this tech now exists at least for simple ballistic missiles.

Afterthought: since the original offensive missiles are unguided anyway, I wonder if an effective countermeasure might be to put on some kind of fin that would cause non ballistic flight?

The american patriot missiles from the first gulf war were facing cold-war era Russian SCUD's. Their success rate was rather low. Most of what the Palestinian militants are launching are Katyusha class rockets that are basically the same design as Russia was using in WWII (Germany had far better designs even then). These are much more primitive than SCUD's. The Iron Dome also has the benefit of twenty years of technological progress to draw upon vs the Patriots. A higher success rate here should not come as a surprise.

What is interesting is how little we hear about this system from the media. While it's probably a great thing to drum up PR about domestically, it probably isn't in Israel's interests for this system to be highly publicized in foreign media since it makes Israel's response to a rather toothless rocket threat look disproportionate.

>> The Iron Dome also has the benefit of twenty years of technological progress to draw upon vs the Patriots. A higher success rate here should not come as a surprise.

To the best of my knowledge the Iron Dome success rate is lower. Patriot missiles in the first gulf war sucked, and there is no solid evidence that even a single one hit its target. During the invasion of Iraq it was a completely different story: only one Patriot missed its target (mostly Chinese-made Silkworm missiles) and hit a Kuwaiti shopping center.

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