The Israeli Air Defense System: “Iron Dome’ Stops Rockets — and Why Ukraine doesn’t have it” (Apr. 2011)
Some of the ways in which Hamas initially attacked Israel on the weekend — taking down communication towers with improvised explosives, paragliding over the border and gunning down civilians — subverted one of Israel’s strongest defenses: its Iron Dome.
The Iron Dome is a mobile air defense system designed to protect against short-range rockets. It was conceived in the early 2000s and became operational in 2011.
Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center forStrategic and International Studies, says there are three parts that make it work.
“For rockets and artillery, for ballistic missiles, it’s pretty predictable. So if you see something traveling on a particular arc, you kind of know where it’s going to be going on the rest of its trajectory, you also know where it’s going to end up,” Karako told NPR.
Third, if the system calculates that the rocket is going to land in a populated area or a place of strategic importance, it activates the last piece of the system — the launcher — which fires Tamir interceptors to collide with the rocket mid-air.
The project was spearheaded by the state-run defense firm, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, that will fine tune the technology over the next five years. According to the report, the U.S. has invested more than $3 billion into its weapon systems.
According to the Israeli military, Iron Dome successfully protected Israel from more than 5,800 rockets that were launched into it since Saturday.
Source: Here’s how Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ stops rockets — and why Ukraine doesn’t have it
The Up First Podcast: Anticipating the U.S. Security Assistance for Israel’s Missile Defense During the 2022-2020 War
“Their approach to acquisition has been not the most exquisite and most expensive interceptor, for the perfect interceptor rate — but rather, large quantities of interceptors that are lower cost and good enough to get after the threats.”
And there is likely more U.S. aid in the pipeline, with President Joe Biden saying on Tuesday that the federal government is “surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome.”
In addition to Biden’s pledge, a group of U.S. lawmakers in the House introduced a bipartisan bill this week that would appropriate an additional $2 billion to help bolster the Iron Dome.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., said the move would be “critical to increasing American security assistance for Israel’s missile defense system, which is saving millions of innocent lives.”
The Ukrainian government has made a number of requests for Israeli-made defense systems — including the Iron Dome — since Russia first invaded in February, 2022.
In March, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a speech to the Knesset in Israel, where he spoke about missile defense and how it could save the lives of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Jews.
Other countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world are looking at this for its lower cost, sooner availability, and proven record.
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