The Hamas 7 October 2023 attack on Israel has become such a historical incident that will be remembered for ages. Some people label this attack as Israel’s 9/11. This time, Hamas dropped such a rain of missiles on Israel that they never thought about it.
The question is that the rocket attacks on Israel used to happen before, and more than 90 percent were not able to cause much destruction; but were destroyed in the air. The Israel short-range missile defense system “Iron Dome” is used to destroy such types of rockets before they hit any city or village. After the excellent initial successes, this system has recently been deployed in 10 different strategic locations of Israel, which has been protecting the population and important areas for the last 12 years, which means these areas are considered safe from rocket attacks. But in recent attacks, such a thing has not happened, but for the immediate impact, this attack proved to be very lethal. This time the Israel missile defense system seems to have failed to some extent.
This system comprises three main components. The first is a multi-mission radar unit, the second is the control unit, and the third is a rocket launcher. The system works in such a manner that the first radar system identifies the rocket heading toward the protected city and starts its tracking. Iron dome radar is effective over a distance of 4 to 70 km, which means the missile that is 70 km away from the radar can be identified. After the detection of the missile /rocket, the radar system continuously sends the information to the control system. This component processes information such as rocket direction and speed with the help of an advanced algorithm to determine whether the rocket is likely to pose a threat or not. This system ignores those rockets that are heading to a place where there is no population and doesn’t engage it. But if the launched rocket is going to hit a populated city, protection is necessary, so from the third unit of the system, the interceptor, the missile is launched to intercept the incoming rocket or missiles. The interceptor missile explodes when it comes near the launched rocket/missile. The system also tries as much as possible to intercept the rocket at a place where there is no ground population. But if there is population, then the siren rings, and people are advised to stay in their homes. So if there is debris from the launched missile/ rocket, and interceptor missile, then the loss should be minimized. In the whole Iron Dome system, other than the radar unit and control unit, there are three to four launcher units and in every launcher unit, 20 interceptor missiles are fixed. This overall system is called the Iran Dome battery means we can say that in one Iron Dome interceptor, there are 60 -80 interceptor missiles present. This system is completely mobile, which means they can be shifted from one place to another where needed.
According to defense experts, this attack can’t be said to be a complete failure of Israel’s Defense system. As the system working is understood, the information obtained from the radar is sent to the control system. Here in this unit, the control unit processes the data after which the decision as to whether to launch the rocket or not is to be made. If any system is overloaded for data processing it sometimes doesn’t give such a response as expected from it and according to some experts on 7 October such a thing may have happened.
Hamas in 20 minutes had launched more than 20,000 rockets and for this system to intercept these rockets accurately was not possible at the moment and Israeli government didn’t tell how many rockets they intercepted so this can only be said on guesswork. This is the one possible aspect of the failure of the Iron Dome missile defense system. The second aspect is regarding the limitation of the system. In this attack the Hamas strategy was like this. According to some reports, Israel has 10 Iron Dome batteries that are operational. If we assume that with every Iron Dome battery, four launchers are attached, the total number of installed interceptors at one time would be 800, which means they can destroy 800 launched rockets at one time, and from the Hamas side, the launched rockets total number as per claim is 5000. Keeping in mind that they are not guided rockets and if we accept that only 20 percent of them were a threat, in that means they were going to hit any target. so even then their number is 1000. If the system intercepts 100 percent of the target, then this number will reach 800 intercepted rockets, and even in this situation there are 200 rockets remaining which hits any target
Other than this reloading interceptors in such a short period is not possible, which means if the interceptor launches all 20 missiles at one time then reloading more than 20 missiles is not possible in such a short time. This is the reason that the Iron Dome system fails to some extent.
Discussing the third point which apparently can’t be labelled as the reason for failure, but still deserves to be considered. One missile installed in the interceptor battery costs $50,000, and the total cost of 20 missiles installed in the interceptors launcher is $1 million and the total 10 Iron dome batteries have 800 launchers, whose millies (obe load) altogether cost $40 million.
On the other hand, one rocket fired by Hamas costs approximately $600, which means a rocket fired at Israel has to be intercepted by a missile of more than 80 times its cost. So concerning cost, this system is not declared as feasible and proved to be too costly.
Iron Dome was prepared by the Israel company Rafael’s advanced defence system with the help of the US and became operational in 2011. This system was developed to protect Israel against the rockets that were launched on it and to protect the Israeli people. Till 2014 in 3 years, this system had intercepted 1,200 rockets and destroyed them. With time this system was further updated and proved to be the backbone of Israel’s defence system. Due to this in 2022, US Congress granted $1 billion for the upgradation of this system. At this time the USA had two Iron Dome batteries which it got from Israel. During the Russia –Ukraine war, the USA wanted to give this system to Ukraine but Israel had an objection to this. According to reports, due to Hamas’s recent activities, the USA is looking to deliver these batteries back to Israel, so that Israel can improve its defence system
In recent attacks, the Iron Dome’s limitations and loopholes have come out in the open. According to defence experts, keeping two things under consideration it is now important for Israel to update this system. Firstly the experts say that this system should be designed in such a way that when on a larger scale simultaneously when the rocket attacks should be carried out, the system should be capable of stopping the rocket’s means to enhance its capacity. Secondly, the cost per defensive weapon, means the cost of interceptor missiles should also be reduced. This is a very important point that is being pointed out by defence experts.
