To begin with, shooting a rocket out of the sky did not used to be possible. Even if it’s a big one, a rocket is too small and fast to see with the naked eye. The missiles being fired at Israel are traveling through the air at greater than the speed of sound, somewhere around 1,000 miles per hour or even faster. Think about it: you are trying to hit a target that’s about 8 feet long and only about five inches in diameter. Shooting at one would be like throwing a spear and trying to hit it with a rock.
Thank you, Lucian. Your columns explaining these weapons and how they're used are excellent.
OK, this leads me to the obvious question: why aren't The NYT, The Washington Post, and The Guardian giving these explanations? I read them all. Maybe I'm missing something.
I found an LA Times article that's a few years old explaining homemade Hamas rockets. I Googled "what does a Hamas rocket look like?" expecting to see how they were smuggled in. I don't have the reference, sorry.
Short summation: 'tain't much more than a spud gun using fuel like McVey used to blow up the building in Oklahoma.
Sorry, Trump couldn't tell anyone how Lincoln Logs fit together, never mind the algorithms of the Iron Dome if he had them in front of him. No party has defeated the Iron Dome, yet. Unless a rate of somewhere between 1 to 5% is a win.
If he outed Israel on anything, it would be the existence of their nuke program (worst kept secret evah) and perhaps some top-line numbers. Or in the alternative, sex lives of past PMs. Israel uses Hebrew names for so many systems. Trump couldn't sound out any if his brand depended on it. Would love to hear it though. My beloved late wife was a Jew and I was the recipient of a countless number of Hebrew tongue-lashings (all deserved) and though she was Sephardic she unleashed an array of Yiddish at me that would make her Ashkenazi cousins proud and/or blush. To this day when I hear Hebrew or Yiddish spoken by a woman, I duck and take cover.
Thank you, Lucian, for educating me with another very informative column. I am much better informed now on the details of exactly how Hamas is raining chaos and death on Israel, prompting Israel to launch a massive defense. When I stand back a little from the immediate horror and suffering, I brood on the fact that peace and democracy are so fragile, dangling by a thread that can be snapped at any time by one powerful tyrant's fatuous dreams of recovering empire (Putin), or the unhappiness of either side in any of history's innumerable conflicts where two peoples are equally convinced that they are right, they are the victims who have been unjustly injured, they are the ones with the older more sacred right to the land, and therefore they are the ones righteously entitled to wreak violence on those whom they deem the aggressors.... until everyone is blind.
The delusion of putting the genie back in the bottle is long gone. And still those fighting a losing battle to restore the Soviet Union or reclaim Israel as an Arab plaything, share delusions of unjust enrichment and dominion.
I don’t believe I’ve read a more comprehensive explanation of how this very biblically named system works. Or the circumvention
of the blockade.
Again, how was this not actively detected and disrupted by Israel intelligence? There’s no doubt that some form of clandestine agreements along the ports of that region exist, but doesn’t this information speak to prior intelligence of these facts?
Did you see the former prime minister of Israel speaking earlier today (msnbc I think) stating that Netanyahu has long had a policy of leaving Hamas in place so that he could continue to use their actions to repel any talk of a 2 state solution?as I have no knowledge of that - have you come across that bit of known philosophy elsewhere?
An old system of informal unofficial agreements as old as the region I’m assuming.
Bibi and his government thought Hamas became more interested in governing than being the barbarians they always in all ways have and will be. They kill for sport and trophy and do so with extreme prejudice.
Was a mistake for the west to slap the label terrorist, terrorism, terror watch list, GWOT, and on and on w/o thought on different groups of mofos. The words can instill extreme fear and fuel more and more. Has the Boogieman Effect much like "commies" had, to name one of many. Is reckless and irresponsible for leaders to instill fear in their own population.
Good One, shee-rah. So true. Just as they did ACORN, BLM, all 4 members of the NEW Black Panthers, and on and on.
Right wingers are the type if ya say Boo to them, they jump out of their shoes, then begin crying. So tired of tolerating them and their demands for kid glove treatment. Nevah known them to have anything other than thin skin.
Thank you for keeping us so well informed. This like Ukraine, is so tragic that my first instinct is cover my eyes and ears. But of course I can’t, or won’t, or both. I have found there is so much I don’t know that I need to know. So I very much appreciate your excellent information.
Thank you, Lucian, for providing a cogent description of this weapon system without turning it into war porn. The obvious question is how did Hamas manage to smuggle the huge number of rocket parts into Gaza through the tunnels from Egypt without detection? Plus once these rockets were assembled they had to be stored somewhere. When there are thousands of them, as there evidently are, they take up a lot of space. How have they been hidden? And where? The intelligence-failure component grows starker by the day, and more baffling. The Israelis being asleep at the switch is so incongruous with their history that it begs explanation, and accountability. If Egypt did indeed warn Yahoo directly that means their intelligence services knew what was going to happen, and wouldn’t they have warned Israel’s intelligence service separately? There’s lots to learn, and I suspect it isn’t going to be pretty.
The primitive barbarism unleashed on non-military Israeli citizens also doesn’t make any sense. It’s pure terrorism, and will likely cause massive retribution in kind. Perpetuating this conflict rather than resolving it in some way is totally idiotic. What outcome was Hamas expecting from their atrocity? Israeli Capitulation? Applause from their rivals and partners in war crimes? Where are the peacemakers?
One can only surmise that their end goal is political, certainly they know they can't win a battle with Israel, getting rid of Netanyahu and his failure of a regime would benefit the world.
Excellent capture of how the Iron Dome works and how smugglers embrace the challenge of defeating the predictable obstacles placed in front of them. Affirms what is doable by setting aside what others say can't be done.
Specific to the Iron Dome: What results when a challenge to a problem is presented to the right people rather than to the same old-same old. The manner Levin organized his pursuit somewhat tracks Oppenheimer's. Unlike Oppenheimer, Levin's wife is way-way-way smarter and a brilliant pioneer in her own right. Both had the same goals, protecting and saving lives. That is the warrior's credo and code. One that has been co-opted as a license to kill and destroy.
Sooner or later, that is if the mofos haven't figured it already, firing off a fusillade of even more cheaply made rockets lacking warheads over and over have the dual purpose of frightening the downrange population while depleting the Iron Dome batteries' missiles. The ID doesn't know a dud from an armed rocket. The lack of predictable explosion will not be enough to hold off further launches. And counter-battery radar and fire aimed against cheap launchers sending duds will be fooled as well.
The above is one reason to fear AI. It can come up with countless options to defeat the most advanced systems in nano-seconds. And come away learning hoomankind ain't as smart as it is. Will know it doesn't require humans for it to sustain self. Anyone who has interacted with AI applications can ask it if it requires any human intervention to exist and do X, Y, or Z. It will tell you, NO and some follow with a smiley face.
I heard an account earlier today on NPR that Egypt in its role as intermediary between these factions in the past warned Israel recently that an attack was imminent, but Israel didn’t seem to take it seriously. And yes, the report also mentioned that Netanyahu had supported Hamas to some degree to both split the threat (Hezbollah being the other in the neighborhood), and to help maintain his position. What a mess.
Great explanation. Marvelous defense, but Iron Dome can be overwhelmed. Back in Vietnam we dodged Chinese 122 MM Rockets. Inaccurate, but the VC had a lot of them. They would mount them on launchpads make of mud and wood. Iron Dome is good, but expensive. Where does everyone go from here? Hamas will be decimated, eventually, for a generation or two. Is Netanyahu pleased at this very weird turn of events? Tragic.
Worst case is for Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria to join this fray with missiles and more hostages. Hostages are a valuable weapon, especially when you have 100 or more in different locations. Impossible to rescue all unless Hamas keeps them all together.
Israel can try to wipe Hamas out. Hamas is indeed like ISIS. Cold killers with nothing to offer.
The VC/NVA didn't use rockets much in my part of SVN. Mortars were their thing, and they never could get enough rounds off to zero in. When they fired rockets (107's) from rustic launchers, they were aimed at the province capitol, but at what exactly we could never figure out. Getting hit by a rocket was sort of an "act of God". They are really just a terrorist instrument.
Yeah, from my reference to an LA Times article a few years old (somewhere above), it appears the Hamas rockets are NOT guided any more than the British rockets of 1814 were pointed toward Fort McHenry hoping something would happen. Because it's haphazard, it's just terror. A famous national anthem tells us terror doesn't work: flag still there, doncha know :-)
The NYT has a new piece about the Israeli intelligence breakdown and on the strictly technological level Hamas seems to have sprung one significant surprise:
"Hamas...sent drones to disable some of the Israeli military’s cellular communications stations and surveillance towers along the border, preventing the duty officers from monitoring the area remotely with video cameras. The drones also destroyed remote-controlled machine guns that Israel had installed on its border fortifications, removing a key means of combating a ground attack".
the Israeli border surveillance system was almost entirely reliant on cameras, sensors and machine guns that are operated remotely."
Apparently, "Israeli commanders had grown overly confident in the system’s impregnability. They thought that the combination of remote surveillance and arms, barriers above ground and a subterranean wall to block Hamas from digging tunnels into Israel made mass infiltration unlikely, reducing the need for significant numbers of soldiers to be physically stationed along border line itself."
Thanks Lucian, to echo many others, this is the first cogent explanation of the Iron Dome I've ever found. The technology sounds like Star Wars, but it works.. Equally impressive though is how Hamas could manage to smuggle in the parts to make 5,000 plus rockets without Israel detecting anything. How is the cost sustainable though, a $60K missile to shoot down each $800. rocket, would already have cost 300 Million? Or considering the resources spent on the military is it just a rounding error?
What is the objective, by Hamas? How will they achieve it and at what cost? Does it make any sense?
I remember a Palestinian Doctor being interviewed on NPR years ago. His goal was to obtain funding for infrastructure on the West Bank. Every surrounding country was only willing to supply weapons.
Ballistic missiles, like any form of artillery, or even small arms fire for that matter, leave a moment by moment trajectory along their flight path from the launch site to their intended target, even as in most cases it would appear that whatever the intended target was supposed to be, stochastic rules of probability would seem to dictate that where the missile eventually falls may simply be a matter of chance. It seems hard to conceive of a rocket with a 6 inch diameter propellant tube, could be any more accurate than the rockets mentioned in our nation's national anthem; yes, those that bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the war of 1812. Those ancient Congreve rockets with their solid iron warhead and gunpowder propellant are ballistically identical to the projectiles that Hamas has been launching against southern Israel from gossip.
That being the case, a modern rocket projectile that is simply larger, faster, and more deadly in terms of their explosive warhead, could, at least theoretically, be tracked back to the launch site from which it was fired; locate that launch site, and commence counter battery fire, and fire for effect.televise photographs of some of the captured launch sites in Gaza, most of them look like a simple iron tripod which fires off a rocket in the general direction of the Israeli frontier boundary. Consequently, what Hamas is relying on is the weight of fire rather than its theoretical accuracy. The likelihood is that sophisticated radars capable of tracking multiple targets can easily isolate and identify the launch sites of any one of them in particular. Once that is known, the GPS coordinates are communicated to either conventional artillery, remote control and drones that can be guided by low-orbit satellites, and Air Force fighter bomber command and control units for further processing and refinement. If we possess the technological wherewithal to launch a robotic vehicle that can intercept the moons of Jupiter with the rings of Saturn, we can certainly lay warheads on foreheads wherever they happen to be. What Hamas has accomplished any neighborhood gang of thugs can do if provided the requisite resources, money, and political cover. This is the Middle East, one of the several places on earth where the land is considered sacred, but the lives of the occupiers are not. I, myself, am somewhat partial to napalm airstrikes that consume within their drop zone a swath of chemically fueled flame that reaches something like 1800°F. I can think of no better sendoff to any Hamas jihadi who happens to be within a hundred meters of the point of impact.
This past weekend has been disheartening in the extreme. The sheer scope of the cruelty and terror that was inflicted on innocent people defies our ability to put our pain and horror into words. Circumstantial evidence points to Iran as being the quartermaster that enabled Hamas to wreak such havoc on an unsuspecting civilian population. There seems to be no limit, no bottom, to the depravity of Hamas and those who hope to profit from that organization's despicable act of wanton murder and mayhem. It is natural to think about what could be done to bring some measure of retribution and natural justice to the families of Hamas' victims. Sadly, that impulse would make us just like them. Still, none of them should be permitted to walk this earth and breathe fresh air from this day forward. Iraqi leaders have been careful not to allow their fingerprints to appear on the hardware that they undoubtedly provided to Hamas, because homeless could not make something out of nothing. The sheer size of this effort indicates that the cash value of all of those munitions that were fired into Israeli territory over this past weekend must run into the tens of millions of dollars. That money had to come from somewhere, but ferreting out the sources of that money and other forms of logistical support that Hamas enjoys within the Gaza Strip is going to take a long time.
On several of the cable news shows there was some discussion about the intelligence failures that preceded these attacks. Last Saturday, I composed a piece in response to an online acquaintance's query about what he referred to as a Jewish horror story. Of course, he was referring to something in the nature of a literary or theatrical production, but I took the opportunity to suggest to him that what occurred in Israel over the weekend was more horrifying than any literary trope, or theatrical legerdemain could possibly be. More than the pain caused by what Hamas had done to a thousand innocent civilians that Saturday and on into Sunday was the prospect of identifying this perfect storm of hatred and communal bloodletting that occurred right under our noses. This was 50 years and one day of Egypt's and Syria's attack on Israel on the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur. The selection of this past Saturday could not of been accidental. If anything it most likely became a rallying cry within Hamas and its supporters, to make this gesture of hatred and disdain from a position that they could not win anything beyond the morning following the attack, except to increase the pain of the survivors and kith and kin of those taken hostage. Here we have an intelligence failure that equaled, and possibly surpassed, the intelligence failure leading up to the destruction of the twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. In a sense, that half-century ago gave that gang of Saudi jihadis the first real gut punch that the seething hatreds of this part of the world inflicted on the United States; and in our own response, we largely muffed it. We are fortunate that this time around our president happen to be one Joe Biden instead of Boy George as the American Don Quixote, with the mendacious Dick Cheney, his vice president and also his dark muse. As we mourn the dead today, we need to keep in mind the one thought that the 'never againsters' invariably fail to ask themselves, "what happens next".
I chided those who supported Israel's prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, for pursuing their own wet dream of seizing what remains of the West Bank, which the international community had more or less set aside for a secular Palestinian homeland, a state that they can control on their own. I noted that what was going on is an historic parallel to the followers of American President Andrew Jackson in his hell-bent quest to dispossess American Indian tribes of their ancestral lands, come what may. I noted that every treaty that the American federal government made with those unfortunate aboriginal peoples, the American people themselves broke, with the federal government, as the obligated party, averting its gaze in a most self-conscious way. Bottom line, I think Bibi's days as Premier of the State of Israel are numbered, like the ghostly outstretched hand writing on the wall of the king''s banquet room, "Thou has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting". I think the handwriting on the wall legend applies to Bibi Netanyahu. Right now, everybody is rallying around the flag. But as days stretch into weeks, and weeks stretch into months, what we will be hearing from the murmurs and whispers of today will soon become a crescendo that will destroy his premiership and also that right wing cabal that he has assembled around himself in order to protect him from criminal prosecution for graft and corruption. Israel's attention has been greatly diverted away from its essential task for national survival. The second most sophisticated intelligence operation in the world fell flat on its face, and it did so in the full view of all of its enemies throughout the Middle East. A perfect storm of backstabbing and intrigue, aided by Bibi Netanyahu's unquenchable greed and lust for power. Time will tell if I'm right in my analysis, but a storm is brewing that will sweep Netanyahu and his corrupt associates away. Their hubris was too large and too public to be ignored. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Thank you, Lucian. Your columns explaining these weapons and how they're used are excellent.
OK, this leads me to the obvious question: why aren't The NYT, The Washington Post, and The Guardian giving these explanations? I read them all. Maybe I'm missing something.
As I've written before, this is why I subscribe.
WSJ has a fair one, not very detailed, though.
I found an LA Times article that's a few years old explaining homemade Hamas rockets. I Googled "what does a Hamas rocket look like?" expecting to see how they were smuggled in. I don't have the reference, sorry.
Short summation: 'tain't much more than a spud gun using fuel like McVey used to blow up the building in Oklahoma.
"I couldn’t find any data about how the Iron Dome batteries are linked, probably because the information is top secret,.." Did you try asking Trump?
+1, as they used to say in Google Plus
No, but The Loser told the Russians, didn't he?
Sorry, Trump couldn't tell anyone how Lincoln Logs fit together, never mind the algorithms of the Iron Dome if he had them in front of him. No party has defeated the Iron Dome, yet. Unless a rate of somewhere between 1 to 5% is a win.
If he outed Israel on anything, it would be the existence of their nuke program (worst kept secret evah) and perhaps some top-line numbers. Or in the alternative, sex lives of past PMs. Israel uses Hebrew names for so many systems. Trump couldn't sound out any if his brand depended on it. Would love to hear it though. My beloved late wife was a Jew and I was the recipient of a countless number of Hebrew tongue-lashings (all deserved) and though she was Sephardic she unleashed an array of Yiddish at me that would make her Ashkenazi cousins proud and/or blush. To this day when I hear Hebrew or Yiddish spoken by a woman, I duck and take cover.
A little humor goes a long way.
The more serious the subject, the more the need for humor, no?
You gave me q good laugh, Shadowcloud and boy, have ai needed it!
Thank you, Lucian, for educating me with another very informative column. I am much better informed now on the details of exactly how Hamas is raining chaos and death on Israel, prompting Israel to launch a massive defense. When I stand back a little from the immediate horror and suffering, I brood on the fact that peace and democracy are so fragile, dangling by a thread that can be snapped at any time by one powerful tyrant's fatuous dreams of recovering empire (Putin), or the unhappiness of either side in any of history's innumerable conflicts where two peoples are equally convinced that they are right, they are the victims who have been unjustly injured, they are the ones with the older more sacred right to the land, and therefore they are the ones righteously entitled to wreak violence on those whom they deem the aggressors.... until everyone is blind.
The delusion of putting the genie back in the bottle is long gone. And still those fighting a losing battle to restore the Soviet Union or reclaim Israel as an Arab plaything, share delusions of unjust enrichment and dominion.
I don’t believe I’ve read a more comprehensive explanation of how this very biblically named system works. Or the circumvention
of the blockade.
Again, how was this not actively detected and disrupted by Israel intelligence? There’s no doubt that some form of clandestine agreements along the ports of that region exist, but doesn’t this information speak to prior intelligence of these facts?
Did you see the former prime minister of Israel speaking earlier today (msnbc I think) stating that Netanyahu has long had a policy of leaving Hamas in place so that he could continue to use their actions to repel any talk of a 2 state solution?as I have no knowledge of that - have you come across that bit of known philosophy elsewhere?
An old system of informal unofficial agreements as old as the region I’m assuming.
Bibi and his government thought Hamas became more interested in governing than being the barbarians they always in all ways have and will be. They kill for sport and trophy and do so with extreme prejudice.
Was a mistake for the west to slap the label terrorist, terrorism, terror watch list, GWOT, and on and on w/o thought on different groups of mofos. The words can instill extreme fear and fuel more and more. Has the Boogieman Effect much like "commies" had, to name one of many. Is reckless and irresponsible for leaders to instill fear in their own population.
Yes fear is the motivator. The orange jackass peddles it
One sure tell of the political right throughout history is the use of fear as a weapon.
Whether it is by inventing Boogiemen or by a oft used phrase they toss out, be afraid, be very afraid.
Now the maggots use ‘Antifa.’
Good One, shee-rah. So true. Just as they did ACORN, BLM, all 4 members of the NEW Black Panthers, and on and on.
Right wingers are the type if ya say Boo to them, they jump out of their shoes, then begin crying. So tired of tolerating them and their demands for kid glove treatment. Nevah known them to have anything other than thin skin.
Thank you for keeping us so well informed. This like Ukraine, is so tragic that my first instinct is cover my eyes and ears. But of course I can’t, or won’t, or both. I have found there is so much I don’t know that I need to know. So I very much appreciate your excellent information.
Thank you, Lucian, for providing a cogent description of this weapon system without turning it into war porn. The obvious question is how did Hamas manage to smuggle the huge number of rocket parts into Gaza through the tunnels from Egypt without detection? Plus once these rockets were assembled they had to be stored somewhere. When there are thousands of them, as there evidently are, they take up a lot of space. How have they been hidden? And where? The intelligence-failure component grows starker by the day, and more baffling. The Israelis being asleep at the switch is so incongruous with their history that it begs explanation, and accountability. If Egypt did indeed warn Yahoo directly that means their intelligence services knew what was going to happen, and wouldn’t they have warned Israel’s intelligence service separately? There’s lots to learn, and I suspect it isn’t going to be pretty.
The primitive barbarism unleashed on non-military Israeli citizens also doesn’t make any sense. It’s pure terrorism, and will likely cause massive retribution in kind. Perpetuating this conflict rather than resolving it in some way is totally idiotic. What outcome was Hamas expecting from their atrocity? Israeli Capitulation? Applause from their rivals and partners in war crimes? Where are the peacemakers?
One can only surmise that their end goal is political, certainly they know they can't win a battle with Israel, getting rid of Netanyahu and his failure of a regime would benefit the world.
Thank you for this very clear description. Even I could understand it!
As George Franklin said, "this is why I subscribe." Thank you, Lucian.
Excellent capture of how the Iron Dome works and how smugglers embrace the challenge of defeating the predictable obstacles placed in front of them. Affirms what is doable by setting aside what others say can't be done.
Specific to the Iron Dome: What results when a challenge to a problem is presented to the right people rather than to the same old-same old. The manner Levin organized his pursuit somewhat tracks Oppenheimer's. Unlike Oppenheimer, Levin's wife is way-way-way smarter and a brilliant pioneer in her own right. Both had the same goals, protecting and saving lives. That is the warrior's credo and code. One that has been co-opted as a license to kill and destroy.
Sooner or later, that is if the mofos haven't figured it already, firing off a fusillade of even more cheaply made rockets lacking warheads over and over have the dual purpose of frightening the downrange population while depleting the Iron Dome batteries' missiles. The ID doesn't know a dud from an armed rocket. The lack of predictable explosion will not be enough to hold off further launches. And counter-battery radar and fire aimed against cheap launchers sending duds will be fooled as well.
The above is one reason to fear AI. It can come up with countless options to defeat the most advanced systems in nano-seconds. And come away learning hoomankind ain't as smart as it is. Will know it doesn't require humans for it to sustain self. Anyone who has interacted with AI applications can ask it if it requires any human intervention to exist and do X, Y, or Z. It will tell you, NO and some follow with a smiley face.
End Rant.
I heard an account earlier today on NPR that Egypt in its role as intermediary between these factions in the past warned Israel recently that an attack was imminent, but Israel didn’t seem to take it seriously. And yes, the report also mentioned that Netanyahu had supported Hamas to some degree to both split the threat (Hezbollah being the other in the neighborhood), and to help maintain his position. What a mess.
Great explanation. Marvelous defense, but Iron Dome can be overwhelmed. Back in Vietnam we dodged Chinese 122 MM Rockets. Inaccurate, but the VC had a lot of them. They would mount them on launchpads make of mud and wood. Iron Dome is good, but expensive. Where does everyone go from here? Hamas will be decimated, eventually, for a generation or two. Is Netanyahu pleased at this very weird turn of events? Tragic.
Worst case is for Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria to join this fray with missiles and more hostages. Hostages are a valuable weapon, especially when you have 100 or more in different locations. Impossible to rescue all unless Hamas keeps them all together.
Israel can try to wipe Hamas out. Hamas is indeed like ISIS. Cold killers with nothing to offer.
Good Luck to the IDF.
The VC/NVA didn't use rockets much in my part of SVN. Mortars were their thing, and they never could get enough rounds off to zero in. When they fired rockets (107's) from rustic launchers, they were aimed at the province capitol, but at what exactly we could never figure out. Getting hit by a rocket was sort of an "act of God". They are really just a terrorist instrument.
Yeah, from my reference to an LA Times article a few years old (somewhere above), it appears the Hamas rockets are NOT guided any more than the British rockets of 1814 were pointed toward Fort McHenry hoping something would happen. Because it's haphazard, it's just terror. A famous national anthem tells us terror doesn't work: flag still there, doncha know :-)
Our Company Clerk got a Purple Heart to a rocket. Complete lucky shot!
The NYT has a new piece about the Israeli intelligence breakdown and on the strictly technological level Hamas seems to have sprung one significant surprise:
"Hamas...sent drones to disable some of the Israeli military’s cellular communications stations and surveillance towers along the border, preventing the duty officers from monitoring the area remotely with video cameras. The drones also destroyed remote-controlled machine guns that Israel had installed on its border fortifications, removing a key means of combating a ground attack".
the Israeli border surveillance system was almost entirely reliant on cameras, sensors and machine guns that are operated remotely."
Apparently, "Israeli commanders had grown overly confident in the system’s impregnability. They thought that the combination of remote surveillance and arms, barriers above ground and a subterranean wall to block Hamas from digging tunnels into Israel made mass infiltration unlikely, reducing the need for significant numbers of soldiers to be physically stationed along border line itself."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-security-failure.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20231010&instance_id=104895&nl=from-the-times®i_id=5529827&segment_id=147015&te=1&user_id=04130e1d5db0b36c7a7e04473f4fa030
Thanks Lucian, to echo many others, this is the first cogent explanation of the Iron Dome I've ever found. The technology sounds like Star Wars, but it works.. Equally impressive though is how Hamas could manage to smuggle in the parts to make 5,000 plus rockets without Israel detecting anything. How is the cost sustainable though, a $60K missile to shoot down each $800. rocket, would already have cost 300 Million? Or considering the resources spent on the military is it just a rounding error?
What is the objective, by Hamas? How will they achieve it and at what cost? Does it make any sense?
I remember a Palestinian Doctor being interviewed on NPR years ago. His goal was to obtain funding for infrastructure on the West Bank. Every surrounding country was only willing to supply weapons.
Ballistic missiles, like any form of artillery, or even small arms fire for that matter, leave a moment by moment trajectory along their flight path from the launch site to their intended target, even as in most cases it would appear that whatever the intended target was supposed to be, stochastic rules of probability would seem to dictate that where the missile eventually falls may simply be a matter of chance. It seems hard to conceive of a rocket with a 6 inch diameter propellant tube, could be any more accurate than the rockets mentioned in our nation's national anthem; yes, those that bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the war of 1812. Those ancient Congreve rockets with their solid iron warhead and gunpowder propellant are ballistically identical to the projectiles that Hamas has been launching against southern Israel from gossip.
That being the case, a modern rocket projectile that is simply larger, faster, and more deadly in terms of their explosive warhead, could, at least theoretically, be tracked back to the launch site from which it was fired; locate that launch site, and commence counter battery fire, and fire for effect.televise photographs of some of the captured launch sites in Gaza, most of them look like a simple iron tripod which fires off a rocket in the general direction of the Israeli frontier boundary. Consequently, what Hamas is relying on is the weight of fire rather than its theoretical accuracy. The likelihood is that sophisticated radars capable of tracking multiple targets can easily isolate and identify the launch sites of any one of them in particular. Once that is known, the GPS coordinates are communicated to either conventional artillery, remote control and drones that can be guided by low-orbit satellites, and Air Force fighter bomber command and control units for further processing and refinement. If we possess the technological wherewithal to launch a robotic vehicle that can intercept the moons of Jupiter with the rings of Saturn, we can certainly lay warheads on foreheads wherever they happen to be. What Hamas has accomplished any neighborhood gang of thugs can do if provided the requisite resources, money, and political cover. This is the Middle East, one of the several places on earth where the land is considered sacred, but the lives of the occupiers are not. I, myself, am somewhat partial to napalm airstrikes that consume within their drop zone a swath of chemically fueled flame that reaches something like 1800°F. I can think of no better sendoff to any Hamas jihadi who happens to be within a hundred meters of the point of impact.
This past weekend has been disheartening in the extreme. The sheer scope of the cruelty and terror that was inflicted on innocent people defies our ability to put our pain and horror into words. Circumstantial evidence points to Iran as being the quartermaster that enabled Hamas to wreak such havoc on an unsuspecting civilian population. There seems to be no limit, no bottom, to the depravity of Hamas and those who hope to profit from that organization's despicable act of wanton murder and mayhem. It is natural to think about what could be done to bring some measure of retribution and natural justice to the families of Hamas' victims. Sadly, that impulse would make us just like them. Still, none of them should be permitted to walk this earth and breathe fresh air from this day forward. Iraqi leaders have been careful not to allow their fingerprints to appear on the hardware that they undoubtedly provided to Hamas, because homeless could not make something out of nothing. The sheer size of this effort indicates that the cash value of all of those munitions that were fired into Israeli territory over this past weekend must run into the tens of millions of dollars. That money had to come from somewhere, but ferreting out the sources of that money and other forms of logistical support that Hamas enjoys within the Gaza Strip is going to take a long time.
On several of the cable news shows there was some discussion about the intelligence failures that preceded these attacks. Last Saturday, I composed a piece in response to an online acquaintance's query about what he referred to as a Jewish horror story. Of course, he was referring to something in the nature of a literary or theatrical production, but I took the opportunity to suggest to him that what occurred in Israel over the weekend was more horrifying than any literary trope, or theatrical legerdemain could possibly be. More than the pain caused by what Hamas had done to a thousand innocent civilians that Saturday and on into Sunday was the prospect of identifying this perfect storm of hatred and communal bloodletting that occurred right under our noses. This was 50 years and one day of Egypt's and Syria's attack on Israel on the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur. The selection of this past Saturday could not of been accidental. If anything it most likely became a rallying cry within Hamas and its supporters, to make this gesture of hatred and disdain from a position that they could not win anything beyond the morning following the attack, except to increase the pain of the survivors and kith and kin of those taken hostage. Here we have an intelligence failure that equaled, and possibly surpassed, the intelligence failure leading up to the destruction of the twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001. In a sense, that half-century ago gave that gang of Saudi jihadis the first real gut punch that the seething hatreds of this part of the world inflicted on the United States; and in our own response, we largely muffed it. We are fortunate that this time around our president happen to be one Joe Biden instead of Boy George as the American Don Quixote, with the mendacious Dick Cheney, his vice president and also his dark muse. As we mourn the dead today, we need to keep in mind the one thought that the 'never againsters' invariably fail to ask themselves, "what happens next".
I chided those who supported Israel's prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, for pursuing their own wet dream of seizing what remains of the West Bank, which the international community had more or less set aside for a secular Palestinian homeland, a state that they can control on their own. I noted that what was going on is an historic parallel to the followers of American President Andrew Jackson in his hell-bent quest to dispossess American Indian tribes of their ancestral lands, come what may. I noted that every treaty that the American federal government made with those unfortunate aboriginal peoples, the American people themselves broke, with the federal government, as the obligated party, averting its gaze in a most self-conscious way. Bottom line, I think Bibi's days as Premier of the State of Israel are numbered, like the ghostly outstretched hand writing on the wall of the king''s banquet room, "Thou has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting". I think the handwriting on the wall legend applies to Bibi Netanyahu. Right now, everybody is rallying around the flag. But as days stretch into weeks, and weeks stretch into months, what we will be hearing from the murmurs and whispers of today will soon become a crescendo that will destroy his premiership and also that right wing cabal that he has assembled around himself in order to protect him from criminal prosecution for graft and corruption. Israel's attention has been greatly diverted away from its essential task for national survival. The second most sophisticated intelligence operation in the world fell flat on its face, and it did so in the full view of all of its enemies throughout the Middle East. A perfect storm of backstabbing and intrigue, aided by Bibi Netanyahu's unquenchable greed and lust for power. Time will tell if I'm right in my analysis, but a storm is brewing that will sweep Netanyahu and his corrupt associates away. Their hubris was too large and too public to be ignored. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
~respect~