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Is the Iron Dome Effective?

(Jerusalem Post) Uzi Rubin - Dr. Theodore Postol, a professor at MIT, has claimed that Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system succeeded in intercepting no more than 10% of the rockets launched by Palestinians in Gaza into Israeli population centers during November's Pillar of Defense operation. The Israel Air Force, the Defense Ministry and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems have studied each and every interception completely, and the results are conclusive: The Iron Dome's success rate is 80%. Postol accuses the IDF of concealing the facts by not revealing the location of rockets that fell on Israeli soil that were not intercepted by the Iron Dome, arguing that disclosure of these locations would not pose a security risk. Publicizing the exact location of these hits would help the enemy improve its aim and thereby endanger the lives and property of Israeli citizens. Postol also claims that the high number of property damage claims proves that the Iron Dome's success rate must be lower than reported, but he did not compare this number with data from previous attacks. In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, 4,000 rockets were launched into unprotected areas in Israel, a quarter of which hit in populated areas. More than 30,000 property damage claims were submitted. Proportionately, the number of property claims after Pillar of Defense, in which a third of the rockets would have hit populated areas, should have reached 14,400. In actuality, only 3,165 claims were submitted. This is one-fifth of the number that would be expected if the Iron Dome were not operational - further evidence that the system has a high interception rate. Postol's claim that Israel has not provided the U.S. with accurate data on Iron Dome's performance is ridiculous. Anyone who has had any contact with the U.S. government knows it would never agree to allocate such a large amount of funding to manufacture Iron Dome systems without carefully checking their performance. The writer served as the first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization in the Defense Ministry.
2013-04-05 00:00:00
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