“To determine cost effectiveness, you don’t look at the cost of the system thwarted, you look at the value of the asset protected.”
True, from a defensive perspective. From the perspective of the offense, things look different. The offense can view the ‘target’ as the defensive missile. Since rockets are cheap and missiles are not, then the offense can consider the exchange as profitable even if it never hits Tel Aviv.
“A Patriot costs a lot more. Only thing that might be cheaper, and could work, is a ground based high energy laser. Incremental cost per shot would likely be fairly low, but overall system cost might be higher than Iron Dome”
Rockets are small, can be hard to hit, and hardened. Some can be made as decoys, nothing but a ‘rock’ with no explosive but very hard to kill.
Another problem with lasers. They’re not eye-safe. You have to be sure you’re not accidently burning the eye balls of a El Al pilot on final with 350 passengers on board.
Problem with all these ideas is simply this. Sooner or later the defense has to take out the launch sites. You can stand back and play defense forever. Sooner or later, one will get through.
No worse that smacking it with a Patriot, or a Standard missile. Problem with all these ideas is simply this. Sooner or later the defense has to take out the launch sites. You can stand back and play defense forever. Sooner or later, one will get through.
That the Israelis did. But some still got through. But even that isn't good enough with these small relatively cheap rockets. You have to take out the factory and/or the transports. The Israelis did that too. Plus you have to kill as many of the guys would make or launch them as you can, and every leader you can locate.