IRON (FISTED) ISRAELI DOME ?

If Israel was compared to a food item, I would say it has a a lot of sweetness with a tinge of bitterness. Sweetness due to all the help that it has done for our country especially in the times of need and bitterness due to the oppression of Palestinian population. Yes Israel faces a lot of terrorists threats from both within and outside but alienating and antagonizing an entire community is not going to help at all. India as a country always had to walk a tightrope when it came to diplomacy with Israel as it valued it's help in the form of defence technology but was concerned due to the plight of Palestinian people. I for one can not comprehend how a community that was almost wiped out due to oppression can do the same to others.

Now what I wanted to point out is that whenever rocket attacks are carried out by militants against Israel the first thing that every media outlet pushes out is the invisible shield protecting Israel called Iron Dome. Iron Dome is a defensive missile system that is designed specifically to shoot down rockets and missiles fired against Israel and what is impressive about it is that it only fires an interceptor missile if the incoming rocket is on path to hit a population centre, if not it simply allows it to harmlessly explode.

Before I give you my take, let me reiterate something first "Iron Dome is a very, mind you very capable system". With that let me tear down its invincibility for you.

As I said Iron dome is designed to shoot down rockets primarily and therefor it's range is very much limited, that is 75 km. It trades range for speed and is extremely quick in recognizing and acting on threats. But what it doesn't score highly is in cost effectiveness. A single interceptor missile costs around $40,000 whereas a crude unguided rocket such as fired by the militants just costs around is $1000, and Iron dome fires two missiles for every rocket detected, so you do the math. The militant organisations just need to saturate the air with rockets to overpower the Iron Dome system

Now coming on to technological prowess, Israel has always used electronic warfare and jamming to counter anti aircraft missile systems operated by other countries like Syria, Lebanon and Iran. But Israel has never been at the recieving end of electronic warfare. To put things into perspective, the below depicted image is that of a Russian Pantsir system which is also designed to engage drones, rockets, cruise missiles etc... In addition to missiles it also sports guns to shoot down threats which escaped its missiles which act as the first line of defence.

This happened when Israelis used jamming to counter a Syrian operated Pantsir -

Here we can see the Russian made Syrian operated system frantically trying to protect itself but being unable to do so. This is the direct result of Israeli jamming and poor training of Syrian conscripts. The reason why Hamas or Hezbollah is not equipped with electronic warfare capabilities is that Iran doesn't wish so. The art of low intensity conflict is that it has to be a long drawn one to exhaust the superior forces, so Iran provides just enough capabilities to these militant organisations to keep the fire burning but not enough to cause an outright blaze, just like how the US helped mujahedeen during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Now coming to the type of threats handled by the Iron Dome system, it boasts of being capable to handle threats from drones to cruise missiles, yet three suicide drones penetrated the defensive shield to cause much harm to Israeli armoured vehicles parked in the open. The Iron Dome was inspired from the Patriot Missile system of the USA, which was used to guard the Aramco refinery of Saudi Arabia that recently came under attack from Houthi drones, supplied by Iran, similar to the ones used by the militant organisations against Israel.

So it becomes harder to believe that the Iron Dome is as capable as the Israeli's say it is. Yes every defensive system can be overcome and so is also the case with Iron Dome.

We always associate Israel's victory over combined Arab provocations as 'David vs Goliath' scenarios but what we fail to truly understand is that it is widely accepted by both Israel and the whole world is that it almost lost the Yom Kippur war. This lead to a realisation within the Israeli leadership that they may not always come out on top of a tussle, the reality was so harsh that after the war Israel signed peace treaties with one of its arch rival and a regional heavyweight Egypt. Since then Israel has enjoyed relative peace with both Jordan and Egypt.

In the case of Palestine and Lebanon Israel enjoys absolute air superiority and therefor can act with little to no fear of retaliation. But sometimes luck doesn't favour Israel and one example for that is the loss of Israeli Airforce F16 to a Syrian operated outdated Russian S200 anti aircraft system in 2018.

Let me just conclude by saying this "it's easy to create enemies but it is much harder to counter them", and I think this is very much the case with the ongoing situation in Israel.