Israeli Officials Praise Iron Dome’s “Exceptional” Success
Ariela Fleisig — August 24, 2011 – 11:15 am | Barack Obama | Foreign Policy | Israel | Military | Terrorism Comments (2) Add a commentIsraeli officials recently commended the effectiveness of the U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile defense system.
Reuters reported:
Earlier this year the United States said it planned to help Israel buy four new batteries after budgeting $203.8 million in congressional funding assistance for the system in fiscal 2011.
The Iron Dome system was rolled out in March after rushed production. It intercepts only rockets it calculates will hit built-up areas and ignores others set to land in open ground.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said militants had fired over 150 projectiles into Israel in the latest round of fighting. Iron Dome’s success was ‘exceptional,’ he said Sunday….
Barak said Israel would have another battery operational within a few weeks, a fourth by the end of the year and nine by the end of 2013. Israel has said it wants 10-15 units to defend its Palestinian and Lebanese fronts.
And:
A senior commander said Iron Dome interceptors had shot down 20 incoming projectiles fired by Gaza militants in five days of cross-border violence and said that statistically the fact that one rocket got through did not mean the system had failed.
Colonel Zvika Haimovitch, an air force officer in charge of Israel’s active air defense units, said that was a very high rate of success but no system could guarantee total protection.
The Iron Dome battery placed to protect the southern city of Beersheba intercepted four of five rockets fired in one barrage but failed to stop the one that got through and killed the man and wounded several other people when it landed near a house.
Barak’s praise for the system follows the recent thanks given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Barack Obama for his help in obtaining the system’s funding.
Click here to read more about the Iron Dome missile defense system.
Click here to read more about Obama’s other actions to strengthen Israel’s security.
Comments
Iron Dome is a big plus but it doesn’t redress Israel’s need for secure boarders and the sanctity of her capital in Jerusalem. No nation allows others to determine which city there capital resides in. This administration made a very seripous error in assuming that Obama’s support for the Aushwitz boarders of 1948/ 1967 boarders would be a comfort to Jews in Israel or religious Jews in the U.S.
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Iron Dome, despite its technical success, represents a total failure in Israeli policy. During the Second World War, Royal Air Force pilots often intercepted and shot down V-1 cruise missiles before they could hit populated areas but some got through, just like a rocket got past Iron Dome to kill Israelis. England solved the problem permanently not by shooting down Nazi missiles—that was at best an interim solution—but by rendering the Nazis permanently incapable of launching them. That is what Israel must do to the terrorists. Note also that the rockets being launched by the terrorists probably cost far less than the Iron Dome interceptors so, even if Iron Dome performed perfectly, the terrorists would still win.