Iron Dome - "Tamir" interceptor missile (Wikipedia)
The decision to develop Iron Dome appears to have been, from the start, an effort to keep the Rafael scientists employed and compensate the company for not benefiting from the research and development funding for the Arrow system, which is being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries.
IOA Editor: So much for Israeli security and for defending our people from Gaza-based terrorism. There’s no business like War Business (there’s even an Irving Berlin Broadway-tune to go with it)… Israeli war profiteering is an important part of the equation. See also:
Amira Hass: Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Who Profits?
Wikipedia – Iron Dome
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz – 4 Feb 2010
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147465.html
The cat is finally out of the bag: Iron Dome, the defense system meant to intercept Qassam and Katyusha rockets will not protect civilians in the communities bordering the Gaza Strip, including Sderot. This despite the fact that the high cost of the system’s development was justified by the need to protect exactly those citizens.
On Wednesday, Amos Harel reported that the Israel Defense Forces and the defense establishment decided to place the first battery, which will become operational in six months, in military storage in the south and not deploy it for the communities’ defense. This decision bolsters arguments by a handful of critics who opposed the development of Iron Dome and proposed cheaper alternatives like the Vulcan canons, or the Nautilus laser air defense system.
The critics argued that due to the relatively slow response time (between 15 and 25 seconds), Iron Dome will not be able to intercept Qassam rockets or mortar shells at a range of five kilometers or less. These are the ranges from which Sderot and the farming communities bordering the Gaza Strip suffered shelling for seven years.
The critics were ridiculed and lambasted by leading figures in the Defense Ministry and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which developed the system. The critics were, of course, right.
The system provides no defense against mortar shells. To date Hamas has used only 81mm mortars, but if in the next war Sderot – or anywhere else – comes under attack by 120mm mortars whose warhead is particularly lethal, the civilians will be exposed, with many casualties and property damage.
When the development of Iron Dome is completed, after two more interception trials, the cost will have come to a NIS 1 billion. The main problem is response time, not whether the system can or cannot intercept a rocket. What is the area that can be defended when the interception times are increasingly shorter? The significance of this is that more batteries are necessary for smaller buffer zones.
At first Rafael and the Defense Ministry let loose the falsehood that a handful of batteries would be able to defend the communities bordering the Gaza Strip, and the northern border. Now it seems dozens of batteries will be necessary.
If the price for each battery is $50 million, the sum required may be as high as a billion dollars for an adequate defense. It is clear that Israel will not be able to invest such sums.
The scandalous conduct of the defense establishment intensified the suspicions that perhaps all the big talk about the development of a weapons’ system that would defend Sderot and the border communities, was only used to serve other interests.
The decision to develop Iron Dome appears to have been, from the start, an effort to keep the Rafael scientists employed and compensate the company for not benefiting from the research and development funding for the Arrow system, which is being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries.
Another reason for the decision was that the defense establishment did not mind investing in R&D because the fund is partly from an Asian country whose name is censored.
The defense establishment hopes that this country and others like it will order the system and thus result in more revenue for Rafael.
However, now that Israel needs to pay for procuring the system, it is clear that the defense establishment is unwilling and does not have the necessary funding. Defending the Home Front was never part of the overall IDF strategy, nor something the air force, which is expected to absorb the Iron Dome batteries into its command, cared for.
As such, the defense of Sderot or the other border communities was never a priority for the defense leadership of the country, specifically Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
