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Don't we have anti missile weapons or something like Israel's Iron Dome?
by sct202 7y ago
Don't we have anti missile weapons or something like Israel's Iron Dome?
- ceejayoz 7y agoSure, and the opposition works hard to evade such things. I'd imagine the Iranian state-of-the-art varies significantly from Hamas's state-of-the-art (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket).
- throwlaplace 7y agoiron-dome shoots down bottle rockets comparatively speaking (i'm being hyperbolic). these missiles were ballistic missiles which have high arches. therefore they're hard to track (picture the difference between catching a fly ball and a line drive) and they have enormous kinetic energy coming down (tough to divert).
- vonmoltke 7y agoIron Dome doesn't work against ballistic missiles. It's designed for much smaller, much shorter range projectiles. One of the difficulties in ballistic missile defense is actually destroying the warhead. Because it is ballistic, hitting the missile and destroying the body during the terminal phase isn't good enough. The structure is essentially dead weight at that point; the warhead is still on track (roughly) to its target. That's why current ABM systems focus on boost-phase interception, because then a body hit completely throws off the missile trajectory.
- cerealbad 7y agoLockheed makes a mobile system called THAAD. I doubt there were any deployed in Iraq, and the effectiveness of these are dubious. The Russians put the S400 in Syria and it has performed well enough. These act more like a deterrent than an actual viable defensive grid.
- mcguire 7y agoTHAAD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_Defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_High_Altitude_Area_De...) is a bit of a big deal in Huntsville. I'm kind of surprised it's not deployed in the Middle East, although I suppose it wouldn't be much of a deterrent if it isn't shown to work better than it did in testing.
- a3n 7y agoThese were ballistic missiles. Iron dome defends against short range rockets and artillery.