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The insane developement history of the Israeli AD system
- enigmadev 5y ago(ad == air defense)
- joncp 5y agoThanks! I was wondering whether they'd implemented a national Active Directory service.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoI was honestly hoping it would be about some speciality Active Directory the Israeli military had developed, because then I could reasonable expect some actual details. As is the texts just amounts to a shallow introduction, making the title click bait.
- enigmadev 5y agoI mean, if you are able to shoot down rockets with Active directory, hell yeah
- Thristle 5y agoA little known feature of Active Directory, added to the standard pretty early I remember
- Thristle 5y agoFor a title like "In this text, Ian talks about the history of the Iron Dome system, the tech behind it, how successful it is, and the involvement of a Toys R'Us car." There is really not much text and/or information, and also a couple of odd typos one correction, ID can intercept rockets and mortars shells come out of an artillery unit and would be quite difficult to hit. also, due to the trajectory, low range and low lethality of mortars 99/100 times ID will never be deployed in locations to intercept mortars
- enigmadev 5y agoCertainly true. I found the context with the Toys R'Us car quite funny, that's why I shared. On mortars, I found this: https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-failures-in-2014-war-iron-dome-shows-it-can-now-down-mortar-fire-too/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-failures-in-2014-war-iro...
- Thristle 5y agoIt can, but it wont The range of trajectories you can intercept and detect is dependent on the location of deployment. In order to catch mortars (very high angle of fire with very short range) you need be very close "to the enemy" when you are that close its much harder to detect rockets since they quickly pass by the radar in that range
- nitwit005 5y ago> Each interceptor missile costs between $70,000–100,000, and an Iron Dome battery costs 50 Million. This is at least the third unique number I've seen for the cost of a missile. Wikipedia cites a cost of $40,000 per missile, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome). I assume people are just guessing from the budget.
- eps 5y agoThis is a very shallow article.
- neltnerb 5y agoAs far as I can tell the only actual detail about the development history is the timeline... there's some specs but this is not a history article.
- dogma1138 5y agoI would be really curious to know what kind of sensor the seekers are using. The ground radar only tracks the target and calculates an estimated IP the terminal guidance is performed individually by each interceptor. At $100K a pop a even a mid range CCD sensor seems to too pricey, the size of the missile also precludes any cryogenically cooled IR sensor or an active radar array and since they can hit a target as small as a larger mortar even passive radar sensing seem to be nearly impossible to achieve. Day and night also seems to have no impact on the performance of the system if anything it seems to have slightly higher interception rates at night and since the rockets it intercepts are in their ballistic stage it can’t even use heat seeking to intercepts its targets. It hits targets as small as 1.5M in length and 15-20cm in diameter so the overall cross section for the target lock is tiny. The politics aside I can’t think of a single missile system that can even compete with this level of performance even at orders of magnitude higher costs. I’m actually surprised that the US hasn’t bought and installed a battery on every single warship it has since the system can also intercept anti ship missiles and even combat aircraft at short ranges.
- Thristle 5y agoOther than in extreme circumstances, the radar unit never stops tracking targets after they were classified as ballistic and with relevant IP
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stagger87 5y ago> the terminal guidance is performed individually by each interceptor. I wasn't able to find this explicitly stated. Do you have a reference for that? What I did find was that unsophisticated rockets are primarily what it defends against. So its guidance may also be 'unsophisticated'. Any reason the interceptor couldn't receive communications from the ground radar to update it's trajectory with minimal onboard guidance?
- enigmadev 5y agoRe warships: I suppose the price is the problem. Israel have developed a seafaring system based on the iron Dome on the Sa'ab 6 class, to protect their oil platforms
- suifbwish 5y agoAccording to the last bit of the article, it’s a bit concerning how much more it costs to operate that system than the cost to attack it. Seems like a high powered laser would be preferable for disabling attacks.
- dogma1138 5y agoI think it greatly underestimates the the actual cost of the rockets Hamas uses, especially the big ones which are clones of Iranian medium range field rocket artillery, as well as the cost of the infrastructure required to build and launch them which Israel constantly blows up. The Qassam rockets indeed used to cost around $1000 in raw materials in the mid 2000’s when they were common but these aren’t the rockets being fired at Israel today, and it’s not like you can order them on Amazon.
- Thristle 5y agoA laser powered solution was POCed, tried and found to be unsatisfactory. While laser based solutions today are much better than when it was tested, but in the end ID was chosen when the AD project started
- dogma1138 5y agoLasers also don’t scale, even a single iron dome battery seems to be able to deal with rather large salvos because it can fire most of not all of its interceptors within the interception window. You will need many more laser based weapons than missile batteries for similar coverage.
- suifbwish 5y agoThinking on it more the other problem is there is lasers deal no kinetic force thus a shell with reflective shielding might prove impervious to a pure light defense
- dragonwriter 5y ago> lasers deal no kinetic force That’s...not true. (Well, “kinetic force” seems like a poorly chosen phrase, but lasers deliver both force and kinetic energy.) > a shell with reflective shielding might prove impervious to a pure light defense Good luck with making a mirror perfect enough to do that and keeping it in condition on a fited shell.
- thifhi 5y agoSo each interceptor missle costs upwards of 70k$ and they typically intercept rockets that cost around 800$. How is that remotely sustainable? Edit: I guess we should also take into account what a missle that hits its target costs to Israel, so I am not that disappointed in the efficacy now.
- handrous 5y agoIt's sustainable if your economy is... does math... 87.5 times the size of your opponent's. That's before accounting for any kind of marginal utility, which might make it less painful for a very rich state or society to spend $70,000 than for a very poor one to spend $800. [EDIT] oh, without even going far-afield with second order effects, you'd also need to factor in the expected economic harm of each $800 rocket (on average) and the economic harm of the threat of $800 rockets landing more often (to, say, the tourism industry)
- bawolff 5y agoIsrael isn't fighting a war of attrition.
- nivertech 5y agoIron Dome is what you build when your thinking is flawed. It solves the wrong problem and actually perpetuates the problem it was intended to solve.
- bawolff 5y agoHow so? It seems like a reasonable (albeit very expensive) solution to the type of asymmetric warfare threats israel has faced in the past and probably will in the future.
- nivertech 5y agoIt is no longer asymmetrical, as it was during the intifada with its stabbing attacks and suicide bombers. Now it's a full-scale war (or at least that's how missile attacks on the population centers called in any other country except Israel).
- bawolff 5y agoI think its pretty clearly not full scale war. Neither Gaza nor Israel has been reduced to a pile of rubble, which is what full-scale war would imply at the very least. As far as asymmetrical goes, i think its still pretty clear the parties have very different levels of resources. Neither of those words can be applied independently without context. If both sides only have rockets than it would not be asymmetrical.
- nivertech 5y agoResources doesn't matter, what matters is intent only. If somebody intended to steal something or to kill someone, he/she will still end up in jail. Please read what I wrote about 9/11. Al-Qaeda's resources were a tiny fraction of what Hamas has, yet US started a full-scale war in the Middle East and ultimately destroyed Al-Qaeda and eventually assassinated OBL. If you use Geneva conventions and so called "International Law", then I'm not aware of any recent military conflict which didn't had elements considered a war crime. I guess IDF is the only army in the world who operates according to these rules and has legal approval for every military operation. The truth is it's only applied to a weaker countries, and never to [list of countries redacted], or UN "peace keepers" who frequently committed real war crimes like raping women they were sent to protect.
- distributedsean 5y agoThis seems to be just weird propaganda from some intelligence company/person. How is this allowed on hacker news? This forum is fairly closely moderated, is it only articles critical of YC that get removed?
- woah 5y agoHate to break it to you, but most links on this site are just weird propaganda from some startup
- distributedsean 5y agoPropaganda is political, promoting your company is marketing. Besides, this seems to be more extreme in it's lack of fairness/ journalistic merit. It seems to be just like I said, weird propaganda, not really even masquerading as news. It looks auto generated, like a bot farm created a web site and got it on hacker news for the clicks.
- enigmadev 5y agoNope, I'm a real person! I swear :P
- distributedsean 5y agoDid you write the article and then post it to hacker news?
- zapdrive 5y agoThat's exactly what a bot trying to impersonate a human would say.
- azifali 5y agoAs someone said, this is a very shallow article...
- bjourne 5y ago> Each interceptor missile costs between $70,000–100,000, and an Iron Dome battery costs 50 Million. The Iron Domes effectiveness is ranged between 80-90%, which is literally unprecedented for an AD system. The standard rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah cost around 400-800 US Dollar per piece. The effectiveness figure comes from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and has never been independently verified (the same goes for the other figures - even the guesstimates about what Hamas and Hezbollah rockets cost to manufacture). The IDF purports to measure successful intercepts per attempt. That is, if Hamas fires 20 rockets and Israel fires 10 interceptor missiles that destroys 9 rockets, then the calculated effectiveness is 90%. Despite the fact that 55% of the rockets fired were not destroyed. According to the IDF, the ID only intercepts missiles headed towards built-up areas. And, also according to the IDF, Hamas fired some 4 500 rockets in the latest conflict of which 1 500 were headed towards built-up areas (the rest missed their targets). Of these the IDF claims that the ID shot down 90%. It's quite a lot and there are reason to believe that the statistic is BS. Primarily because relatively many Israelis were killed. This time Hamas killed 11 Israelis using about 4 500 rockets but during the 2014 war, it only killed 6 using roughly the same number of rockets. One would expect the number of casualties to decrease - not increase. Either Hamas is finding ways to mitigate the ID or the ID isn't very effective or both.
- dismantlethesun 5y agoOr the rockets are becoming more effective via larger payloads or better targeting towards more populated buildings. Or perhaps they got lucky, or more people were at home due to COVID. The US regularly kills 12+ people via single missile strikes. No reason Hamas can’t kill 12 with a hundred missile strikes.
- bjourne 5y agoCertainly it is possible. Though it would imply 10x improvement in Hamas's rocket technology and the evidence for that is scant. Perhaps, instead, the ID isn't that effective but that most Israelis have drunk their own Kool-aid and aren't running to shelters when the air raid sirens sound. Either way, there are reasons to be skeptical about the 90% figure.