Common sense taught me that anything Axios says is worthless.
Some Physics on Saturday morning.
How many folks remember watching manned spacecraft re-entry TV coverage and there was a “communications blackout” period lasting XX seconds.
No that was not intended to elevate the drama. That, people, is ionized gas. Plasma. And the bad news is plasma tends to absorb radio frequencies — of all sorts, certainly S band and X band and L band, too. If it did not do this, the comm links would have long ago been redefined in frequency to dodge this physical property.
Missiles at high velocity, very high velocity, form plasma around them. And yes, that means radar won’t track them. This is why hypersonics have begun the emergency programs in the US to have its own.
And so. This is the source of Iron Dome’s failure. High altitude trajectories of Iranian missiles are low enough for there to be some air molecules that are slammed into at that velocity, ionizing them (smashing a few electrons off atoms (that’s what ions are, atoms with more protons than electrons)), and that is the definition of plasma — ionized gas.
Instantly, radar loses track. The vast majority of time enroute the missile is invisible to THAAD, ARROW, Iron Dome, any crap you want to call it. If you can’t see it, you can’t hit it.
This obviously gets covered up, for legit reasons of denying the enemy knowledge of damage done, and more intensely to protect the manufacturers from destruction of reputation, in case they want to sell more useless X-band tracking radars.
Iran has 92 million people. Israel has 9 million and 91% is urban. The media will posture Israel to have crushing superiority, but you can’t create population with PR.