Posted on 11/25/2012 12:50:31 AM PST by ilcenter
The US, South Korea... maybe Taiwan and other countries should be buying up Iron Dome.
That’s very encouraging.
However, it’s hard to believe that Iran or China or Russia can’t engineer ways to make cheap mass produced offensive missiles more deadly.
This looks the beginning of a classic arms race, actually.
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This is devastating not only to the terror strategy of Hamas and Hezbollah, but also to the military doctrines of Israel’s nation state enemies, such as Iran and Syria, which have heavily invested in missiles and rockets to compensate for their weak air power.
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Thanks for your back-to-back posts.
Very informative.
And the first time I've felt a flash of optimism about Israel's survival in several years.
Are you located in the USA, Israel, or some place else?
The Iron will need to become smarter and thicker as Moose missiles learn to dodge (right now it assumes dumb rockets and ignores those headed for open lands).
There was a flash of optimism long ago for Israel’s survival. It was in the burning bush.
I agree with the premise of this article. I would add that much of the money spent on this system stays in Israel... it stays as profits for the manufacturers and salary for the workers and designers.
The real cost is the actual value of the physical components and the fact that the workers ingenuity and labor would be better spent doing something more productive.
There is a possibility that Israel may end up turning a profit on all this. They certainly are the world leader in this technology and foreign sales to western powers and perhaps India/Taiwan/S.Korea just might make a business of this :-)
Mortar fire is a difficult problem for towns close to Gaza though, Iron dome is not cost efficient against mortars since they are very cheap. The proper defense against mortars is a Phalanx like system. The problem is that the massive barrage of bullets thrown by a Phalanx aimed at the sky will fall back on Gaza and cause casualties. Yes, Israel worries about casualties in Gaza and that is why they are not using Phalanx.
If I were Bibi I’d say that’s over-squeamish. Don’t shoot the Phalanx gratuitously, but do use it as needed when there is incoming, and too bad so sad if it rains destruction upon the areas from which the incoming came. Tell them to police the terrorists out of their territory if they don’t want that.
Not hearing a whole lot of thanks in that article.
But you’re welcome.
Well, this was an Israeli, and he ought to be thanking God. This wasn’t something off the US shelf, so what’s the “you’re welcome” about?
Iron Dome was developed by Rafael. Do you work for them or something? Why do you think you are owed thanks by the author of the article?
Ping.
-——Moreover, most rockets miss and Iron Dome ignores them———
This is the money sentence. In the first instance, the rockets are not accurate enough to be an unmanageable threat. To become more accurate, the rockets must become much more expensive and technical. The technical part is important because it means those who tend the rockets must have educations that are unobtainable.
-———with the exponential rate of technological progress-——
It is pleasing to read words of an educated person/journalist who knows the correct term is exponential and not parabolic
For mortars, you need a laser-based system. Photons aren't effected by gravity over the distances needed. And rate of fire should be higher. I suspect some Israeli defense lab (and a few US labs) are working on this.
I was thinking perhaps bullets that explode after a certain short period of time. It would drastically reduce the shrapnel that would fall on Gaza...would raise the cost per bullet from say a dollar to several dollars though.
Hats off to you for knowing photons actually are subject to gravity...most don’t know that :-)
The trouble with a laser system is cycling the capacitor bank quickly enough...and heating.
Think of a pulsed CO2 laser system configured like a mini-gun (i.e. with separate laser tubes and with capacitor banks for each "barrel"/tube). Desired rate of fire optimized by number of tubes to take care of the capacitor recharge/heating difficulties.
Even a chemist has to know that photons are "subject to gravity".... ;^)
The U.S. helped fund it with hundreds of millions of dollars, and will be giving more more money to continue funding it.
Some mention would have been nice.
I didn’t realize that. It’s a nice piece of technology.
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