“World’s greatest” is included in the Telegraph headline. These are not my words
“The world is taking notes after Israel’s
formidableIron Dome was breached by Iranian rockets”
Iron Dome “formidable” Again, wording from the Telegraph article that will be linked in below. These descriptors don’t jibe with my rather limited understanding of that system. It seems to me the Iron Dome had issues long ago. So problematic in fact that it was claimed to be better characterized as the “Iron Sieve”
The reality is Israel was struck much harder by Iran’s hypersonic missiles than the US and Israel initially wanted to acknowledge
First, let’s go back 10 years, via archive.ph, to 2014
Original url – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-21/israels-iron-dome-weapons-expert-warns-of-major-flaws
On Monday, Lloyd e-mailed me a copy of a 28-page analysis that’s the most detailed critique yet of the holes in the Iron Dome system—holes so big that, if he’s right, would justify calling it Iron Sieve. He says his paper is based entirely on open-source documents and observations and was
cleared for public release by the Pentagon in late May.Lloyd wrote the paper for Tesla Laboratories, a defense contractor in Arlington, Va., for which he is a consultant, and plans to post it on the Internet “sometime.” He spent more than two decades at Raytheon and was a past engineering fellow at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.
The strength of Lloyd’s critique is that ordinary people can evaluate the effectiveness of Iron Dome just by looking up in the sky at the contrails of the antimissile system’s Tamir interceptors.
If it’s working properly, the interceptor missiles shoot upward and meet incoming Hamas rockets as they fall to the ground at a steep angle. The contrails are short and go straight skyward. If it’s not working, the contrails form loop-de-loops as the interceptors chase after the rockets and catch them from the side or behind.
Postol, a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT who is familiar with Lloyd’s work, compares the Iron Dome interceptors to an outfielder who misjudges a fly ball and has to backpedal furiously to get under it. “The radar system should be able to track incoming rockets with reasonable precision. That should not be a big problem, but there’s something going on,” Postol says.
Read entirely at the archive link above.
On to some excerpts from a more recent Telegraph article-
A week after one of the heaviest single attacks in history – using advanced ballistic rockets – the full impact of the assault is only just becoming apparent.
Experts are frantically working to understand how – and if – Israel can defend itself from more waves of rockets if war continues to escalate in the Middle East.
Video filmed by a passenger on a commercial jet from Dubai captured the start of the attack, which appears to have come from near the Iranian city of Shiraz.
Shortly after, Israelis were instructed to run for shelter. Ballistic missiles are estimated to take about 12 minutes to reach their destination first entering the earth’s atmosphere and later re-entering at speed.
One video showed at least nine missiles making impact near military facilities in Israel, while detailed accounts later found many more had broken through.
Dr. Yehoshua Kalisky, Senior Researcher at INSS, a think tank in Tel Aviv, said that Iran’s intention was to “saturate the air defence system” by firing an unprecedented 180 missiles at the same time.
How Iran broke through
Israel’s air defence system consists of several layers; the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow weapon system, the world’s first anti-tactical ballistic missiles (surface-to-air missiles used to shoot down ballistic missiles).
Some observers also voiced concern about the speed of the missiles.
Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert and doctoral research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project, said the footage clearly shows the “extraordinary speed in real time, some 600/700m per second, they are incredibly fast”.
All of the missiles Iran fired were “hypersonic in essence until they re-enter the atmosphere and are slowed down,” he added.
What Iran hit
Israel initially downplayed the damage caused by the attack, but later admitted that several military bases were hit – although no aircraft or critical infrastructure were damaged.
A satellite image the company Planet Labs later revealed that t
he Nevatim Air Base had been impacted in 30 different places, damaging hangars and buildings.
A large crater from a missile was also found near the Israeli intelligence headquarters of Mossad in Glilot, north of Tel Aviv.In total it is estimated that more than two dozen missiles broke through air defences. Some 20 missiles struck the Nevatim air base, while three missiles hit the Tel Nof base in central Israel.
What next?
Security experts have warned for years that a major coordinated missile attack by Iran and its proxies could overwhelm the air defence system and cause huge destruction to civilian areas.
After last Tuesday’s attack, the evidence suggests a full-scale Iranian ballistic missile barrage hitting a densely populated area could kill hundreds of people.
It appears Iran was not interested in targeting civilians when these strikes were conducted, unlike Israel’s consistent interest in hitting civilians in order to terrorize the populace.
The question remains as above- What next?
Can Israel chance a massive Iranian volley of missiles in their degraded state?
Four soldiers have been killed and more than 60 other people injured in a drone strike targeting an army base in northern Israel, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has said.
The IDF added seven soldiers had been severely injured in the attack on a base “adjacent to Binyamina” – a town around 20 miles (33km) to the south of Haifa.
Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said targeted a training camp of the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) Golani Brigade in the area, which is based between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
The armed group’s media office said the strike was in response to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut on Thursday.
The group said it targeted the camp in northern Israel using a “swarm of drones”.
The Israeli ambulance service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said 61 people had been injured in the attack – including three critically. It added 37 of them had been taken to eight regional hospitals, either by ambulance or helicopter.
In a statement before the IDF confirmed the deaths, MDA said that alongside the three critically injured, 18 of the victims were in a moderate condition, 31 sustained mild injuries and nine people were “suffering anxiety”.
The reason for the discrepancy in the number of critical injuries between MDA and the IDF is not clear.
Israeli censorship rules prevent media outlets saying exactly where or what was targeted, but some media outlets say the location was hit by a low-level drone launched from Lebanon – a relatively unsophisticated weapon that appears not to have activated early warning alarms.
As mentioned Israel had not been previously successful in Lebanon No cake walk, no sweets and flowers for the liberators.
Which brings to mind the Bush Jr regime as the horrendous Dick Cheney and his evil daughter are touting Kamala this time around. From Republican to Democrat
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