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I think Iron Dome has a high success rate due to the type of missile. Mostly 80mm unguided 'Katyusha' and 122mm 'Qassam' unguided rockets, which are destroyed b

by grkvlt 9y ago

I think Iron Dome has a high success rate due to the type of missile. Mostly 80mm unguided 'Katyusha' and 122mm 'Qassam' unguided rockets, which are destroyed by multiple interceptor missiles with proximity fuzed explosive warheads. I was in Tel Aviv in 2012, when larger Fajr-5 330mm rockets were fired at the city and I saw several of them being successfully intercepted, a few thousand meters out from their targets. Sadly there was one rocket that hit Tel Aviv, killing several people, and another 'failure' of sorts when debris from an intercepted Fajr-5 landed in a Tel Aviv street, however the warhead did not explode and it was simply falling at terminal velocity... Iron Dome also has an interesting optimisation mode where it tracks the impact point and will not waste a salvo against the incoming threat if it will land somewhere harmless like the sea or open countryside.

smacktoward 9y ago
Yes, this was my thought too. Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not substantially harder to shoot down than a World War 2-era V-1 buzz bomb. Medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles reach speeds of many thousands of miles per hour, making them much harder targets to intercept.
- trhway 9y ago
  >Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not exactly. Most seems to be manufactured either in Iran or China and a follow on or similar development off basic USSR/Russian systems, like Grad, Uragan, Smerch - these rockets have speed anywhere between 2M and 3M. It is outside of capabilities of many air defense systems on the merit of the speed alone. Add to that multiple rockets in a salvo. Iron Dome being capable of dealing with that is a very huge achievement.
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    I'm going to hazard a guess that it's actually very hard to make a sub-sonic rocket!
    - nl 9y ago
      The Qassam rockets are little more than large, deadly fireworks rockets (see an image: https://usdiaspora.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/qassam-rockets-and-human-shields.jpeg https://usdiaspora.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/qassam-rocket...) There are bigger ones than that of course, but the smaller ones are certainly subsonic.
  - nl 9y ago
    The 'Katyusha' and 'Qassam' rockets are subsonic, or perhaps just transonic in the case of the Katyushas (which are quite varied) "The Qassam's speed in the air is 200 meters per second." (= ~750km/h)[1] The Katyusha rockets fired from Gaza are commonly quoted to hit Tel Aviv in 2 minutes (35km in 2 minutes = ~1000 km/h) [1] https://www.haaretz.com/news/iron-dome-system-found-to-be-helpless-against-qassams-1.239896 https://www.haaretz.com/news/iron-dome-system-found-to-be-he...
    - trhway 9y ago
      there is a range of rockets used by Hamas https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qas... The 'Qassam' are the low-end of Hamas rockets, and they are locally made low quality stuff. The rest is imported military grade production. >The Katyusha rockets fired from Gaza are commonly quoted to hit Tel Aviv in 2 minutes (35km in 2 minutes = ~1000 km/h) Judging by the distance and the name Katyusha, it is probably Grad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad) rockets as by looks and function it most closer resembles Katyusha. The Grad is 122mm and it is the starting system in that type of weaponry and its rocket speed is ~700m/s. The higher-end, 200mm and 300mm, systems fly a bit faster and much farther (typically Chinese versions are even faster and longer range than original Russian).
    - grkvlt 9y ago
      The Katyushas can't hit Tel Aviv. From Gaza, the only system that can threaten Tel Aviv is the Fajr-5, which were fired at it for the first time in 2012. The linked chart [0] shows that most Katyusha/Quassam rockets have a maximum of ~30km range, whereas the Fajr-5 can make the ~75km to hit Tel Aviv. The warning time given is 60-90s (i.e. from when the air raid sirens sound to impact or interception) so with a margin of error on the slow side, they do 75km in 2m which is ~2250 km/h or Mach 1.8, definitely supersonic. I think I was wrong about the smaller rockets though, which are subsonic. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel#/media/File:Rockets_from_gaza_(en).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    You're saying that the majority of rockets fired from Gaza are not made in Gaza? That contradicts everything that I've read about them.
    - gozur88 9y ago
      "Rockets fired at Israel" includes foreign-manufactured rockets fired from Lebanon.

by grkvlt 9y ago

smacktoward 9y ago

Yes, this was my thought too. Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not substantially harder to shoot down than a World War 2-era V-1 buzz bomb. Medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles reach speeds of many thousands of miles per hour, making them much harder targets to intercept.

trhway 9y ago
>Rockets fired at Israel are generally cheap, short-range subsonic jobs, not exactly. Most seems to be manufactured either in Iran or China and a follow on or similar development off basic USSR/Russian systems, like Grad, Uragan, Smerch - these rockets have speed anywhere between 2M and 3M. It is outside of capabilities of many air defense systems on the merit of the speed alone. Add to that multiple rockets in a salvo. Iron Dome being capable of dealing with that is a very huge achievement.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  I'm going to hazard a guess that it's actually very hard to make a sub-sonic rocket!
  - nl 9y ago
    The Qassam rockets are little more than large, deadly fireworks rockets (see an image: https://usdiaspora.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/qassam-rockets-and-human-shields.jpeg https://usdiaspora.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/qassam-rocket...) There are bigger ones than that of course, but the smaller ones are certainly subsonic.
- nl 9y ago
  The 'Katyusha' and 'Qassam' rockets are subsonic, or perhaps just transonic in the case of the Katyushas (which are quite varied) "The Qassam's speed in the air is 200 meters per second." (= ~750km/h)[1] The Katyusha rockets fired from Gaza are commonly quoted to hit Tel Aviv in 2 minutes (35km in 2 minutes = ~1000 km/h) [1] https://www.haaretz.com/news/iron-dome-system-found-to-be-helpless-against-qassams-1.239896 https://www.haaretz.com/news/iron-dome-system-found-to-be-he...
  - trhway 9y ago
    there is a range of rockets used by Hamas https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qas... The 'Qassam' are the low-end of Hamas rockets, and they are locally made low quality stuff. The rest is imported military grade production. >The Katyusha rockets fired from Gaza are commonly quoted to hit Tel Aviv in 2 minutes (35km in 2 minutes = ~1000 km/h) Judging by the distance and the name Katyusha, it is probably Grad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-21_Grad) rockets as by looks and function it most closer resembles Katyusha. The Grad is 122mm and it is the starting system in that type of weaponry and its rocket speed is ~700m/s. The higher-end, 200mm and 300mm, systems fly a bit faster and much farther (typically Chinese versions are even faster and longer range than original Russian).
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    The Katyushas can't hit Tel Aviv. From Gaza, the only system that can threaten Tel Aviv is the Fajr-5, which were fired at it for the first time in 2012. The linked chart [0] shows that most Katyusha/Quassam rockets have a maximum of ~30km range, whereas the Fajr-5 can make the ~75km to hit Tel Aviv. The warning time given is 60-90s (i.e. from when the air raid sirens sound to impact or interception) so with a margin of error on the slow side, they do 75km in 2m which is ~2250 km/h or Mach 1.8, definitely supersonic. I think I was wrong about the smaller rockets though, which are subsonic. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel#/media/File:Rockets_from_gaza_(en).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
- greglindahl 9y ago
  You're saying that the majority of rockets fired from Gaza are not made in Gaza? That contradicts everything that I've read about them.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    "Rockets fired at Israel" includes foreign-manufactured rockets fired from Lebanon.