Iron Dome goes three for four
The Iron Dome anti-missile system went three for four on the outskirts of Ashkelon on Friday evening - shooting down three rockets, while a fourth fell 'harmlessly' in Ashkelon's industrial area. There has been a lot more shooting and it's continuing on Saturday night. Israel Radio just reported that the 'Palestinians' shot over 50 mortars and rockets on Saturday.Read the whole thing.
Three for four may be a decent batting average, but it's not one that's going to let life go on normally in southern Israel.
Labels: Ashkelon, Gaza, Iron Dome
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:48 PM
8 Comments:
time to create a panic in gaza city and cause the "palestinians" of gaza to storm the rafah crossing and squat in the sinai.
i'd suggest Israel start firing rockets at gaza city...
dont aim, just shoot at the lights....
don't forget, it's just been deployed, operational efficiency will go up on the system as it gets used more so it should get better as time goes on.
Wrong. The Iron Dome radar is connected to a computer which automatically calculates the trajectory of incoming rockets, and it only engages those rockets that are calculated to impact in populated residential areas, and ignore missiles calculated to impact open spaces or non-populated areas. That way, the number of expensive iron dome rockets that are used, are used only in the mission of saving lives... and saving money by not trying to engage every rocket. So saying that it got "three of four" is misleading. It got 100% those missiles that it was designed and ordered to get. So far, no Israelis have been injured by rockets in the past 24 hours. Had those rockets on a trajectory to hit Ashkelon or Be'er Shevah gotten through, there most certainly would have been casualties. In any event, every Gaza rocket fired needs to be treated as if it had hit an appartment building, and the resonse should be acordingly.
Given the difficulty of what the system is doing it's a fantastic engineering achievement.
Though still a failure on a human level.
The good news is the system only gets better from here.
Its useless in Sderot where the average warning time is 15 seconds.
Israel's leaders are using the Iron Dome as an excuse to avoiding eliminating Hamas.
In the long run, Israel will be forced to go back into Gaza because there is no choice.
American here in the states...Other then the Iron Dome, how come there aren't more injuries when the Palestinians shell with mortars and such? I have to do some digging beyond the Main Stream Media here of course, but I have seen several reports where Isreali cities were shelled or rocketed, but no injuries are reported.
For example, it is reported this very Saturday that Hamas Soldiers (That's what they really are after all) launched 50 mortars on Isreal but no casualties or even injuries were reported.
Are they that inept (very likely) or does Isreal have a warning sysetm in place that allows folks to run to shelters?
Thanks.
Warren,
Yes, there's a warning system but it doesn't always work. I would attribute the relatively low number of injuries to a combination of the warning system, Hamas ineptitude and an awful lot of grace of God.
Thank you Carl for your answer. Much appreciated.
Best of luck and best of God's grace.
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