The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working

Israeli here, and this is not going to be a very subjective opinion, but rather a simple observations after being through a few wars with thousands of rockets shot each.

In the 2nd Lebanon war(2006), Hezbollah shot ~120 rockets/day at north Israel and Haifa, and the destruction was both visible and painful. 44 civilians dead. Multiple buildings in Haifa destroyed. I remember the pictures, so many of them. We had the alarms, we had the bomb shelters then, but still, the rockets destroyed and killed.

In the current conflict, almost zero dead, almost zero buildings destroyed, and this is while Hamas is shooting roughly the same number of rockets(~120/day), bigger rockets and to a far more densely populated areas than ever targeted by either Hamas OR Hezbollah(Tel Aviv, Rishon Leziyon where most of Israeli population and commerce is).

There is a reason why Hezbollah and Hamas equipped themselves with tens of thousands of rockets, because it used to work, but not anymore.

I've even had a discussion previously today with my dad that if accuracy of Iron Dome would increase to 99%, we could actually turn off the siren system and maybe just ignore Hamas rockets, keep living normally, thus preventing the need to use offensive military force and prevent casualties on both sides.

Unfortunately we've recently learned that Hamas has already developed a new tactic, building tunnels under the border into Israeli towns and have 10-20 Hamas soldiers come with handcuffs and syringes with anastasia to kidnap Israeli civilians. We've already discovered ~15 such tunnels, and there is much talk that we need an "Iron Dome" for discovering tunnels in the very special geological structure of the sand around Gaza.

I personally need an Iron Dome for my soul, after seeing so many pictures of Israelis and Gazans dead, having difficult conversations with my kids and having a difficult time building my startup when all I can think of is this war. Fucking war.

(While writing this I was interrupted due to 3 rockets shot at Tel Aviv, 2 intercepted, 1 hit a house, the first time for central Israel in this war.. the irony).

This article is based on the flawed assumption that where the rocket explodes is irrelevant. His criteria for success is frontal impact which the author claims is the only way to destroy this midair. Regardless of this, if the impact alters the trajectory to bring down the rocket in a less populated area, fewer people die.

The author has been a vocal critic of missile defense systems for decades. While that doesn't negate his arguments, it suggests a potential motivation for his artificial definition of success.

Edit: As the comment below points out, the rocket's trajectory could be changed so as to increase casualties. While that's true, it won't do so on average for several reasons. A rocket is only targeted if the system believes it has a high probability of striking a populated area. Since the expected losses are high, average will be better. In fact, average should be much better because the distribution of population density is so skewed. A small percentage of land is in dense regions. In this particular case, there's the added advantage that the most populous cities are relatively far away from Gaza so early impact is better.

Interesting analysis. If the Iron Dome is mere security theater then it makes it makes sense that the IDF won't simply sit back and let Hamas fire away until they run out of rockets. Enough property damage may make Israelis' behind the Iron Dome realize that it's only the shelters that offer real safety.

I'm curious about Hamas' choice in rockets though. Would larger rockets present as easier targets for the Iron Dome? If so, then the Iron Dome does indeed serve an important purpose by limiting Hamas to rockets small enough to be harmless to shelters. If not, then why would Hamas not use rockets large enough to penetrate a shelter?

Finally, let's assume the ineffectiveness of the Iron Dome was commonly known. Given the sharp increase in IDF casualties after the ground invasion started, would it still have made sense to invade if there was no fear that Israelis might lose confidence in the Iron Dome?

From what I understand, many of the statistics quoted about Iron Dome are for "attempted interceptions". This skews the effectiveness of the system towards high-priority scenarios, maybe those that are more likely to produce a winning outcome for Iron Dome.

As an Israeli, I've always heard the Iron Dome rockets are stupid expensive to fire, so the IDF really only wants to fire them during scenarios that are high risk -- e.g., a rocket fired toward the Negev is much lower priority than a rocket fired at Tel Aviv.

On another note, I think that as programmers it's an interesting exercise to speculate as to the nature of the computer systems Iron Dome employs in order to mitigate attacks. AFAIK, Iron Dome rockets are only fired when high-value areas are targeted or there is a high probability of success. Can you imagine the kinds of online learning models we employ nowadays, being able to evaluate a set of inputs in <10s ? Even a complex Bayesian inference algorithm that could solve for a probable strike area in that short time with reasonable accuracy is incredible.

As colloquial evidence, a family member of mine recently posted a photo of Iron Dome intercepting a rocket almost directly over his home. So maybe it's not that accurate or that effective, but when it does work it's worth almost every dollar or shekel spent.

A meta-point about understanding hostilities-in-progress:

As curious analytical types, or as motivated participants in political debates about proper defense systems and policies, we'd like to know what's really going on, and sooner rather than later.

But note that in the "fog of war", confusion about what's really working and what isn't can be important. Lots of bad information will circulate, either due to natural misunderstandings or the calculated propaganda efforts of affected groups.

Maybe a myth of Iron Dome potency serves other purposes, covering for other tactics or shifting enemy behavior usefully. Or alternatively, maybe a myth of Iron Dome impotency and cost-ineffectiveness serves other purposes.

This of course makes contemporaneous democratic, open-society discussion of war a nearly-intractable task. It could be years (if ever) before outsiders and laypeople get a reasonable idea of what's really going on. This doesn't mean it's not worth discussing, just that confidence in any evidence or conclusions should be kept very, very low for quite a while.

It's painful to see someone try a scientific approach (which is good!) but already fails in the assumptions. There are probably many ways a defense rocket could harm an incoming missile without hitting it directly up front. Destroying it's back might and should result in the warhead not reaching it's designated target, which is already a success. Even exploding near a missile might change the air environment of this rocket enough to harm it's target trajectory. Last but not least every kind of pressure might result in damage to the rocket's proper functioning and thereby result in it's early triggering or not triggering at all.

While I also believe that a tool like the Iron Dome might be inefficient for it's pure militaristic purpose (it might have psychological purposes as well) the article is not much help in deciding whether this assumption is true or not, because the assumptions are already flawed.

There's no evidence to speak of in the article--just calculations speculating that the success rate should be low. At best, it calls for Israel to produce evidence that the system is indeed working.

There have been a shockingly low number of deaths on the Israeli side, does this mean that if the Iron Dome wasn't even deployed, that the rockets launched from Palestine would cause little to no human losses? I had assumed that the large imbalance of deaths between Israel and Palestine was because of Israel's technological advantage (Iron Dome), and not that the Palestinian rockets were largely ineffective.

If it's not working, that's a pretty bad sign for the US ballistic missile defense system. I'm assuming it's easier to hit a Mach 3 Grad than a Mach 20 ICBM

Out of interest, what is the trigger mechanism for the rockets warhead? Would an Iron Dome missile have a higher success rate if it had a strong enough blast radius that meant it only needed to explode near an incoming Hama's missile, rather than actually having to hit the warhead directly?

Another Israeli here. I watched those intercepts taking place over my head. Add to that the numerous YouTube videos of such intercepts and let's call the lot "experimental evidence". That should trump the article's theoretical analysis imo :)

technology-wise the thing like Iron Dome could have and should have been deployed 20 years ago. Today the missile based defense system against short range relatively slow missiles is becoming obsolete (and thus whether the Iron Dome missiles are effective is becoming not that important) with coming up of the systems like this http://defense-update.com/20131214_us-army-tests-high-power-...

I've seen quotes that suggest the missiles cost between 20 and 100,000 dollars. How is it suitanable to continue using the Iron Dome at such a high cost?

The only way the Iron Dome works is as a propaganda tool for Israel.

Sounds like the Israeli government has joined the American government in their favorite pastime: covering and manipulating. Just like 9/11, the moon landing and the JFK "assassination", here is yet ANOTHER proof that our governments are making up stories to keep us docile and complacent. Well done, Israel. Well done.