Iron Dome Missile Protection System Of Israel Against Palestine Rockets From Gaza

No tour of Middle East conflict zones could be complete without a stop at Sderot, an Israeli town of  24,000 that stands uncomfortably close to the Gaza  Strip. The rain of rockets out of the Palestinian enclave has made Sderot  famous for two things: the thickness of its roofs (even bus stops have  reinforced concrete tops); and the collection of crumpled missiles arrayed in  racks behind the police station. As a visiting VIP in 2008, U.S. Senator Barack  Obama dutifully inspected what the machine shops of Islamic Jihad and Hamas fashioned from lengths of pipe and scrap metal.  Low-tech doesn’t begin to cover it.

It’s a long way up the Mediterranean coast from Sderot to Haifa, and even  farther to the showroom of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., the  weapons-development branch of Israel’s military-industrial complex. Hi-tech  doesn’t begin to cover it. Rafael developed the first precision-guided munitions — the  precursor to the American-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions that replaced “dumb  bombs” — and scores of other battlefield innovations, from IED detectors to  floating drones. But the company’s most acclaimed invention is the one now  President Obama will inspect moments after arriving in Israel on Wednesday: Iron  Dome. It is a missile-interception system that has performed what Israelis  regard as a miracle, draining a good bit of the fear out of the wail of an  air-raid siren. During the last Gaza conflict, which lasted a week in November,  Iron Dome knocked out of the sky a reported 84% of the missiles it aimed at —  that is, the ones headed toward population centers. The rockets headed for open  space its computers simply let fall. Rafael executives are understandably proud  of Iron Dome, which after a few months on the job is performing at the level of  a system that’s had seven years to work out the kinks. But they appear even  prouder of the unlikely philosophy behind it. To make the most-tested, if not the most effective antimissile system in  military history, Israeli engineers took a page from the Gaza militants they  aimed to frustrate. The secret to Iron Dome is that it’s cheap.

(MORE: Iron  Dome’s Lessons for the U.S.)

Consider the problem of volume. Since 2005, Gaza militants have fired more  than 4,000 of their homemade rockets into Israel. Most cost a few hundred  dollars each. Interceptors typically cost a few hundred thousand. “The main  question that everyone asks is, ‘You’re firing a very costly missile against  something very cheap,’” says Joseph “Yossi” Horowitz, a retired air-force  colonel who markets air-and-missile defense systems at Rafael. “So our main  mission was to reduce the cost.”

The economizing would be across the board, but the biggest savings were  realized by reducing the size of the missile’s eyes — by far the most expensive  component. An interceptor missile locks onto its target by following directions  from the radar in its nose cone, typically packed with radio-frequency sensors  of extravagant unit cost. An interceptor carried by a fighter jet has to be very  smart, because it’s expected to find a missile being fired in its direction  before it’s even in sight, one that could come from any direction. The nose-cone  radar of an AIM/AMRAAM has so many RFs, or radio-frequency nodes, that  it runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But a homemade missile coming out of Gaza is simply ballistic: it goes up and  comes down. Rafael realized its launch and trajectory can be detected by ground  radar, which would then transmit that information to the Iron Dome interceptor  launched into the area of the sky where it’s headed. Only when the two missiles  come near one another does the interceptor’s own radar come alive, guiding it to  the incoming Qassam or GRAD and colliding with its own nose — where the warhead  is positioned — in midair. It’s a delicate business, what with each missile  traveling at 700 m per second.

“I can bring the interceptor in an accurate way, near the target, which  means I can use the radar, the ‘seeker’ for a very short time,” says  Horowitz. The shorter the time, the fewer the RF sensors required. “Saves  money,” he says. How much? “Two digits: from hundreds of thousands of dollars to  several thousand dollars.”

(MORE: ‘Iron  Dome’ Protects Israel From Gaza’s Missiles: Will That Embolden It to Strike  Iran?)

The savings mount up. Most guided missiles are made of so-called exotic  materials, complex polymers designed to prevent the rocket from expanding or  contracting as it travels through different altitudes. Again, not necessary for  Iron Dome, which ascends only a few thousand feet. “Here we did it with  aluminum,” Horowitz says. “Went across the street. Got some pipe.”

The result is visible in this  extraordinary YouTube video from a wedding in Beersheba, an Israeli  city of 200,000. The incoming missiles are not visible in the night sky until  the ascending Iron Dome interceptors find and destroy them — again and again and  again. “We can do more, but in this video we do 12,” says Horowitz, a reserve  colonel in the Israeli military’s air-defense section. “You are not looking for  the best of the best. You are looking for some optimization.”

At about $50 million per battery — the launchers with 20 missiles each,  ground radar and command-and-control center, led by an officer equipped with an  abort button — Iron Dome still costs plenty, especially since Israel estimates  it would need at least 13 of them to protect the entire country. It currently  has five. But the U.S. Congress voted about $300 million to help close the gap,  which is why the Israel Defense Forces will truck a battery to Ben Gurion  Airport on Wednesday to be photographed behind the American President.

That no previous antimissile system has performed so impressively might  raise awkward questions about the norms of defense procurement in other nations.  (For David’s Sling, the Israeli version of the Patriot 3, the U.S.  intermediate-range interceptor that costs about $5 million per interceptor,  Rafael is partnering with Raytheon, an American firm, and still aims do the job  for one-quarter of the cost.) But for Israelis, the more pressing question is  how to define success.

(MORE: Psychological  Warfare with Missiles: Why Tel Aviv Matters)

Back to the Beersheba wedding. The revelry appears to carry on oblivious to  the wail of air-raid sirens competing with the DJ (that song in  the background is “Sunday Morning” by Maroon 5). If Israelis no longer  scramble to shelters, then Iron Dome really has changed the dynamic. It’s not  yet at that point; schools still close when the rockets fly, and parents stay  home from work. But Rafael’s head of research and development, who began work on  Iron Dome even before the government thought to ask for it, tells TIME that its  overarching accomplishment is that it can break the pernicious cycle of  escalation that can lead to things like invasions. The batteries can liberate  Israel’s elected leaders from the public pressure that comes with mass  casualties. “The big success of Iron Dome is not how many missiles we  intercept,” says Roni Potasman, the executive vice president for R&D. “The  main success is what happened in the decisionmaking civilian population  environment. The quiet time. Clausewitz used to say the mission of the military  is to provide the time for the decisionmakers to decide. Now, if out of 500  missiles, 10 of them get by and cause casualties, a school or kindergarten, then  this is a whole different story.”

The more stubborn problem is that, even though Iron Dome knocked down 400 of  the rockets fired out of Gaza in the last round of fighting, Hamas acts as  though it prevailed in the conflict. What’s more, polls show 80% of Palestinians think so too, while only 1 in  4 Israelis think their side prevailed. Israeli warplanes killed scores of senior  militants and destroyed hundreds of missiles and launchers on the ground,  including Fajr-5 from Iran. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad still launched their own  version of the Fajr, dubbed the M-75, toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — unsettling  Israelis who had previously considered themselves out of range and had not heard  an air-raid siren since the Gulf War.

“[Gaza militants] were hit badly, much more than four years ago, but still I  think they perceive it as a success,” says Potasman. “This is the Middle  East….one side is looking at this reality from one angle; the other side looks  from a totally opposite angle. That’s why we cannot communicate with them on a  regular, normal basis, because you see one reality, and you look at this and you  say, ‘Hey, what else can we do, to kill them? I mean, to kill them softly?’ And  they look at this and they say, ‘Hey, we were able to hit Beersheba and  Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. So our understanding of the reality and their  understanding of the reality is totally different. It’s not the same book.”

— With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Haifa