I thought the Israelis designed and built Iron Dome on their own. They have requested more missiles for it from the US. Am I mistaken, or can it be used to control various missile launchers?
I was reading up on this yesterday. It is not compatible with other missile launch systems.
Missile Firing Unit: the unit launches the Tamir interceptor missile, equipped with electro-optic sensors and several steering fins for high maneuverability. The missile is built by Rafael. A typical Iron Dome battery has 3–4 launchers (20 missiles per launcher).
But the U.S. provided substantial financial aid and investment in the project, and
In July 2014 it was announced that Raytheon would be the major U.S. partner in co-production of major components for the Iron Dome’s Tamir intercepting missile. The U.S. firm will supply components through various subcontractors.
ETA: actually rereading some of the stuff about when the U.S. was contemplating deploying it, maybe I’m wrong about compatibility in some respects. Raytheon claimed
Iron Dome can be seamlessly integrated with Raytheon’s C-RAM systems to complete the layered defense.
But I doubt that means Israel are asking for different launchers to integrate with their system, more likely they are asking Raytheon for more Tamir missiles.
The rockets that Iron Dome uses are much more limited, being designed for the use case we’re seing now, and therefore much cheaper. A Patriot missile is over a million bucks, I believe. A rocket for Iron dome is more like $40,000. Which is a good thing, because the strategy Hamas is using is to simply overwhelm the system with cheap rockets.
Israel also has Patriots, which have been used successfully to bring down Scud missiles. If Iran starts shooting at them, the Patriots will likely be used.
Thanks.
I thought the Patriots had some failures and that is why the Israelis built Iron Dome.
Everything has failures.
The Patriot system was initially designed as an anti-aircraft weapon. It was updated to provide limited missile defense. Desert Storm showed the need. It was designed in the 1970s. There have been many improvements since then. The US also uses CRAM which is a more close in system. It’s a land based version of the Navy Phalanx system.
I think I heard once that the Patriots didn’t actually take down any Scuds during Desert Storm. Hitting a missile with another missile is just really hard, and the tech wasn’t yet ready for it. But fortunately, the Scuds were unreliable enough that a lot of them took themselves out.
The PAC-2 Patriot as used in the Gulf War had a proximity fuse and sprayed shrapnel at the incoming missile. The PAC-2 had two problems: If it detonated in ‘kill’ range it was counted as a kill, but some missiles survived that and arrived anyway. Also, the Patriots of the time had a false-positive problem and many were launched at debris or other false signals.
Lessons learned from that led to the current PAC-3 Patriot, which has a number of upgrades and a contact fuse, meaning it actually hits the missile it’s targeting. So far, the performance of PAC-3 seems to be much better. Not perfect, though. Missile defense is hard.
I recall seeing on CNN scuds that were claimed to be taken down by patriots. Bush praised them at the factory where they were made, and news stories followed that they weren’t as good as claimed.
I hesitate to make any kind of silly joke today, but maybe the next generation missile defense tech is Jewish space lasers.
A scud missile travels at over 3,500 mph.
A patriot missile is somewhere around 2,500 mph.
An M16 bullet travels about 2,000 mph.
So, hitting a missile with a missile is up there with hitting a bullet with a bullet. Not easy (not impossible, but not easy).
Is it not somewhat easier that the patriot explodes when near the missile?
Unless Iran starts launching Scuds that’s not the worry. The rockets the Iron Dome is used against are not going nearly as fast as a ballistic missile.
I am no expert in this stuff but you are right that the interceptor missile does not need a direct hit. It just needs to get close. But I am not sure that makes the intercept a whole lot easier. The intercepting missile still needs to get very close and know to explode in that tiny fraction of a second where the incoming missile is vulnerable.
But easier is easier. More likely to succeed so yeah…definitely do that.
Issues with the Patriot in Desert Storm are a favourite of software engineering classes.
Highly visible and well documented. Long since fixed.
I think you just need to throw some shrapnel in front of it to change it’s path or cause the warhead to go off.
A successful intercept may not be entirely successful. A scud, or whatever Hamas is throwing at Israel, are not very accurate. They are just meant to hit a city which is a big target. Stopping a guided missile is very good because you save some important thing. But scuds/Hamas rockets are fine hitting anything. So, if the interceptor doesn’t destroy the warhead it just drops the missile on whatever is below it. Even if the warhead doesn’t go off that is still a lot of metal raining down.
Hopefully the interceptor destroys the warhead and you gotta try to stop it if you can.
I always thought that an interceptor detonates in front of an incoming missile so that its blast wave forms an expanding circle of force in the air and that the incoming missile runs into the oncoming bubble-force-wave and it damages it or throws it off course, kind of like a car slamming 100mph into a wall.
I looked it up and, assuming Hamas is using Qassam rockets, they go about 450 mph. Waaaaay slower than a scud.
But, they are relatively short range. Scuds have a range of 100-400 miles (depending on variant). Qassam rockets have a range of ~10 miles. So, while “slow” they are not in the air long.
That was a quick Google search. I am not sure what Hamas uses for rockets.
Iron Dome was designed to have a low cost per shot, a high rate of fire, and be cheap enough to be used affordably against massed attacked by very simple primitive home-made rockets. Like the Qassam.
Which takes nothing away from it. It has fast reactions, high reliability, and has had very good success. It’s a model example of seeing a military need and affordably filling it.
At the same time, it’s not for the same mission as any of the other anti-aircraft or anti-missile systems either Israel or other countries have. Those other missions require lots more money per shot, etc.
Qassam has become a generic term for many different types of rockets that are mostly built with Gaza itself. A Scud-D is a much more sophisticated weapon that not only reach the speeds you mentioned, it almost reaches orbit. Totally different problems for anti-missle system to solve.