Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Cracked Iron Dome
Reuven Pedatzur snipes at the PR folks basking in the success (in tests) of the Iron Dome System. I have no way of knowing who's right, but some of it seems hairsplitting. No-one ever said Iron Dome would stop all incoming Palestinian fire, and everyone knows it's an expensive system built to thwart cheap ones. The ultimate test of reality lies before us, in any case. Still, since I'm on record as thinking Iron Dome is a fine thing, it's only credible that I ought to link to a contrarian.
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4 comments:
I saw Pedatzur on Israel TV last night. He feels that the cost of each iron Dome anti-missile projectile is too high to make the system feasible vs the thousands of rockets Hamas and Hizbollah can make for a few dollars.
From the explanations provided, it seems that the purpose of the system is to intelligently detect and destroy those missiles, increasingly few, that might make it to a populated area, using a sophisticated radar system to distinguish among them. So it will not be trying to shoot down ever single missile.
I suspect that if there was one aimed towards Pedatzur's own home, he might feel the cost was worth it!!
Maybe someone should quietly tell him how much Lebanon 2006 and Cast Lead actually cost Israel in real money.
shortly after the last post on the Iron Dome here the Chinese bragged about having their own innovative missile defense against Taiwan - it seemed to be something geared to more sophisticated missiles but when reading it I thought maybe Israel went public with it because there is a competition for the best sales contracts going on ...
rgds,
Silke
Reuven Pedatzur belongs to that stupid class of people in Israel who succeeded in getting the next generation Lavi fighter plane canceled on cost grounds. This must not happen to the Iron Dome system. One can't place a price tag on a human life and in the next war and before then Israel will need every conceivable advantage to safeguard the home front. Stacked up against the costs of rebuilding and human trauma, the Iron Dome project looks like cost-effective investment in Israel's long term security - and it takes years to find out of the payoff is worth the cost.
The inhabitants of southern Israel need an effective answer today regardless of the cost involved.
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