Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ changes the face of battle
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
As an Israeli citizen whose home is in the range of the Hamas rockets, it's hugely comforting to know that this technology has been deployed. I'll be teaching a Python class in Tel Aviv tomorrow, and while I can basically expect that Hamas will be sending a bunch of rockets aiming to kill me (or anyone else they can), I'm happy to know that our interruptions will likely be annoying and frustrating, rather than lethal.
As an Israeli citizen who doesn't want to see our foot soldiers in Gaza (for a very large number of reasons), I'm also happy that Iron Dome gives our government time before sending them in.
The situation with Gaza, and with the Palestinians, is a pretty bad one, although I remain optimistic over the long term. For now, though, anything that reduces the threat of rockets that Hamas is sending at us strikes me as a good thing.
Believe me, I have a huge amount of criticism for the current Israeli government. I voted for opposition parties. I disagree with a large number of their policies, most of which have nothing to do with the Palestinians.
But I have nothing but praise for a government policy that results in fewer civilian deaths. Those might have long-range, unexpected effects, but less death is a good thing, I'd like to think.
Indeed, I would encourage all governments -- including that of Hamas in Gaza, which isn't exactly an enlightened democracy -- to spend time and money on ways to protect their people, and avoid death, injury, and destruction.
Given that Hamas has a stated policy of killing as many Israeli civilians as they possibly can, and that they have worked to achieve that goal to the greatest possible degree, I can only express delight and gratitude that Iron Dome exists, and that it is effective.
[1] - http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-21/how-to-st...
This raises two questions:
1. What is the commonality between missile defense and fleet management ?
2. How does a system that is most likely real-time run on windows/.net ?
As an American, I find I often feel the need to use something like news.google.com to find articles on any given story from many countries around the world to get a more balanced view. This is a practice that I have introduced to several friends and family members, and once they make the little bit of effort to look at world wide coverage they understand my complaint about the US news industry.
In our modern world, I think that it is at least ill-advised, if not dangerous, to live in a bubble and not read many opposing opinions on important events.
I stand by my comments on the benefits of reading news from multiple sources.
Perhaps it was just me but at the end of this article I felt drawn to neither side. The only thoughts I had on the matter were, "Man that is cool. Its too bad people have to be in harms way for such technology to get funding, but thanks for pioneering the simplest versions of the tech we need to stop asteroids".
So the article is little more than a straw man to divert from the real atrocities being committed by the Israelis' in Gaza today. And that is entirely the point of the OP - that this article is little more than a technocratic diversion to feed the fetish of a homogenous target group, rather than real reporting on the issue.
Arabs also have a way to prevent missiles raining on them - by not lobbing missiles at Israel.
Meanwhile, aggressive action gets cheaper for Israel from a human casualty perspective if they don't have to worry about further pissing people off who have rockets. Cynically speaking, lowering the cost of something makes it more likely to happen :(
If, however, Iron Dome gets to a point where Israel feels safe enough to delay/attenuate/cancel a ground invasion as a mitigating/retaliatory tactic, one possibility the article mentioned, then it could be a net benefit. Does require self-control, though. And I don't know how safe people will feel if rockets are being fired in their general direction, even if you get very good at shooting them down; I doubt it is something you get complacent about.
E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQtZ9DY3MnU
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using violence against these people. There I've said it. Are the Israeli's innocent ? No. But that doesn't mean they are morally on the same level as the Palestinians.
I agree that you should read many different news sources, but keep in mind who owns Al Jazeera just as much as you'd take who owns the BBC into account.
"“The Iron Dome system and its impressive success thus far have had a strategic impact on managing the campaign. It gives us wide options,” said Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. “Having said that, we cannot become complacent.”"
Reminds me of when I first read many years about the potential paradox of using a firewall and security - that it also meant you couldn't ignore individual security settings (turning off ports and services) on machines behind the firewall assuming that the first line of defense was sufficient.
Taking one precaution and yet remaining cautious is rather common. We wear seat belts, yet drive carefully. We practice good hygiene, and yet get vaccinations, etc.
Here is why:
You put up a firewall to make you secure. So you should be secure. But by putting up a firewall you fail to secure something else or you are lax in another area of security. Because you think "it's been take care of. So I see it as a paradox. Although it could be ironic if someone put up a firewall but then was hacked because of something they didn't do thinking they didn't need it if they had a firewall. That would be an irony.
It's clear that Israel is doubling down on automation and military technology so that the war can grind on from an increasingly safe distance. They have the tiger by the tail and they cannot let go! So, lock it in the closet, behind domes and fences, etc.
I would hate being stuck in Gaza right now. Can you imagine? What a shit-show. There is no "dome" there, naturally. The bombs come flying in with ease. And it seems like 50/50 that there will be a ground invasion. Supposedly Egypt has the tunnels to Gaza sealed. Maybe Israel thinks this is the time to completely smash Hamas. All this is something to think about while you sit in a basement, for days.
That said, I really hope they don't launch a ground invasion - thanks to the Iron Dome it is even more asymmetrical/unnecessary than it usually is and would only serve to push Hamas back towards more radical tactics, like suicide bombings, and other more radical groups will form in Hamas' wake if Hamas is destroyed.
Hopefully cooler heads prevail. But we're talking about Bibi here.
The "opposition" which is most effective results in the growth of knowledge and economic power. Knowledge and economic power can buy weapons and create game-changing technologies. The human race is still vile, primitive, and tribal, but we are slowly waking up from history. We've gotten to the point where a great many of us have figured out that war and violence have no glory and are just a really bad idea.
Worry less about borders and what it takes to have them and put effort into infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and businesses.
"Every few years Hamas launches rockets at Israel, Israel then uses the opportunity to smash the crap out of Hamas for a few days while "international concern" grows, at a certain point Israel stops the attacks, the international community claims a victory and Hamas gets a bloody nose, nothing changes and it all happens again in 2-3 years"
I suspect sometimes I'm too cynical..then I read the news.
It's not every few years, it's every few weeks. [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_atta...
Is Hamas even a target anymore? In 4 days Operation Protective Edge took the life of 114 people, 88 of which were non combatant civilians [1]. They even managed to destroy a centre for disabled people. [2] That's a quite a big margin of error for one of the most advanced armies on the planet.
[1] http://www.sunherald.com/2014/07/11/5693711/gaza-death-toll-...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/12/disabled-palest...
They store these weapons in houses, in mosques, in hospitals in the hopes that civilians die and then useful people like you come and post these comments.
This area of the world has found a local optimum that isn't very optimal and that nobody wants, but that nobody sees a way out of, either.
All this put the hamas with very little political and monetary support and with inability to pay operatives. They are near collapse.
So how do hamas wants to get the support of the people of gaza? By creating a common enemy.
So they shoot missiles at israel, israel has no choice but to respond, political support of hamas increases and the cycle continues.
It appears the politicians created the current war against the army's wishes, and that Hamas were actually keeping the peace on the ground
I wish the scenario playing out here was a blip in history one rather than one that festers for decade, after decade, after decade without significant positive change.
Given the constraints, I suspect the next standoff weaponry will become drone based. Something flying fast enough and high enough to be immune to small arms fire, but low enough to keep out of the kill zone of anti-air and anti-missile defense.
The only part which sounds odd is the "human factor" claim near the end. AFAIK the system is fully autonomous once deployed and does not require a human to decide whether or not to launch an interceptor missile.
How unlikely is that?
I'm not saying the theory is correct, again, I have no idea, but that argument seems weak.
But Israel, of all states, is more than capable of pulling off these kinds of activities, and its been in the dirty-tricks playbook for decades (along with those of most modern governments with an Intelligence budget, to be fair).
Until we, the people - the true masses - demand a truthful process in place of propaganda and deceit, we will never know the real truth. The likelihood that these events are orchestrated by those who truly stand to profit from both sides is pretty high. There may well be a hidden third party between Palestine and Israel, intent on continuing to profit from the conflict, and those people - well funded, I might add - are very far from the visible center stage, nay the prison dock, where they belong.
It would be a catastrophe for Netanyahu and company if all Palestinians would suddenly stop fighting because then all attention would focus on Israel's settlement policy and its unwillingness to give the Palestinians anything deserving the name "state".
No, the Zionists do not want to crush Hamas. They tellingly call campaigns like the current one "mowing the grass". Thing is, mowing the grass is not an attempt to destroy it, the point is to preserve it in a manageable state. And that is exactly what Israel is doing with Hamas.
Edit: Let me rephrase—"probably not much cheaper."
These seem to be about 800 dollars a piece with the payload
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/graveyard-shift-fo...
Yep.
Kid doesn't seem to have any parents to educate/restrain him, and the police is not interested. Not many other choices.
The best approach is to lie down and let the kid bash your face in.
Every country in the world is the making of occupation, if you want your land back, don't shoot rockets, that simple.
So can we please give back all the land ? Of course, there would be nowhere for muslims to live at all, least of all Palestina. It was not arab land, it was not muslim land. Nor was Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt. Can we give back the land, kick out everybody who currently lives there.
The truth is as sad as it is obvious : nobody is clamoring for the land to be given back because ... they're all dead. Egypt was mined for "black gold" (slaves for muslims). Anything south of the delta was black in ancient times. Carthago (Tunisia) was filled with black people. Mined to death. Palestine, in ancient times, was filled with Jews (as everybody knows I guess), and so was Saudi Arabia. Before that ... we don't really have any data, but given the location of the region, I would imagine it changed hands many times. Iraq was a nation of Indians, not arabs.
I find it hard to believe people using arguments like that can be reasoned with at all. The utter absurdity of it.