More accurate is the hit rate. If to get these 270 rockets they are having to fire 2700 Iron Dome missiles, that would be an effectiveness of 10%. If they fired 540, it would be 50%, 300 firings 90%and so on. Even that could be misleading, perhaps the high rate of fire was done in order to increase probability of success, each in bound might have several missile fired at it. That would understate it’s efficiency.
Statistics divorced from context are never reliable.
Thanks. That’s precisely why I asked the question.
Initially, each engagement was two Iron Dome missiles (called “Tamir”) per incoming rocket; in the following days the high success rate prompted the Sir Defense Command to go down to one rocket = 1 interceptor. So, at least from day 2 or so onward, a nominal interception rate of 90% = 90% effectiveness as well.
Not that I disbelieve you, but cite?
Hebrew sources. I’ll see if I can scare up something in English 
Unfair. If it isn’t in a Romance language, it ipso facto doesn’t exist for research purposes.
If the Israeli ambassador to the US, is to be believed Hamas still has 12000 rockets and most of those are hunkered down in Gaza city. Even with the current success rate if Hamas do go all out ( and allowing for significant degradation in ability due to Israeli strikes) that still means many thousands of rockets raining down and with numbers of Tamir would be reduced due to expansion. Unless Israel really does have 5000 missiles in reserve.
How did they acquire them? Running the blockade, tunnels to Egypt?
Cite for the system using two interceptors per engagement in the past, and the reason for this fixed, but without the assertion that now only one is fired: Iron Dome - Wikipedia (towards the end of the “Deployment” section)
Still working on finding an actual cite for the fact that we’ve scaled down to a single interceptor per engagement… I may not be able to find a reputable source for this, since it’s recent news, but anecdotally I can tell you that from watching videos of engagements from the POV of the Iron Dome battery, it’s clear that indeed only one missile is used per incoming rocket.
ebay.
I’ll be in the computer room.
Best I can give you is this video in which you can see a ***single ***explosion in the sky, taking out the one missile that was engaged coming in towards Tel Aviv (the other one was assessed as “no threat” and not engaged.) Note that there is only one warhead explosion.
Now this doesn’t rule out a second interceptor going off outside the frame, or the possibility that there is no self-destruction mechanism on the interceptor, but it’s a fairly wide frame so I’m deeming the former unlikely, and I doubt the latter is true, because no self-destruct would be a security menace when landing…
Check out wikipedia – these are steel tubes, hand drilled nozzle plates, fueled by fertilizer, with smuggled TNT and a shotgun shell primer. They have a fancy Arabic name, but they’re being knocked out by hand by craftsmen. They’re not re-purposed Soviet junk like other military equipment in the Arab world.
The intent of an interceptor missile is not to detonate the incoming warhead (it is surprisingly difficult to light one off), but to fracture, obliterate or otherwise incapacitate it. A falling chunck of metal, while not the safest thing in the world, is better than an exploding chunk of metal. A proximity fuse and fragmentation warhead is the typical combination. Hitting a missile with a missle is tricky business.
Arrow 3 missile scores space test success
ETA: FWIW I found thread Does Israel have working ‘starwars’ technology? but its short and died in 2002.
David’s Sling anti-missile system used for first time, in false alarm on Golan
Military says projectiles were fired as part of internal fighting in Syria, did not cross the border, but initially seemed like they might; alarms sound throughout northern Israel