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His analysis is flawed. For example, imagine if several rockets are fired at a hospital. Iron Dome intercepts the rockets, throwing them off course. The rock
by wmil 12y ago
His analysis is flawed.
For example, imagine if several rockets are fired at a hospital. Iron Dome intercepts the rockets, throwing them off course. The rockets then land in parks and parking lots, killing no one.
Under Postol's standards, that's a complete failure. Because the warheads weren't destroyed.
But most people would judge that as a major success.
Assuming the rockets are reasonably accurate and targeted to do the most damage possible, simply damaging the rockets and changing their path is a success.
- danielweber 12y agoAssuming the rockets are reasonably accurate and targeted to do the most damage possible, I'm saying this hesitantly, because it has the potential for things to go off the rails into a flame war, but the rockets are very inaccurate -- literally hitting the side of a barn would be a good strike. Damaging them probably reduces the chances of them hitting a high-value target by a few percentage points, but they have no targeting systems on board. They are flung in a general area, and landing in place X or place Y in that general area isn't too much different. There are also significant psychological factors at play.
- spingsprong 12y agoIron Dome calculates the probable impact point of rockets fired at Israel, and only intercepts rockets that are going towards inhabited areas.
- ranran876 12y agoWhich means somewhere the Israelis have a priority map with which areas are more or less important to defend. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would come out of something like that leaking?
- danielweber 12y agoNah; if something is projected to land in a bunch of, say, farmland, then trying to intercept it could make it land someplace worse. A necessary prerequisite to a missile defense system is a way of telling where rockets are going. Even if they don't have the first, they probably have the second.
- bjourne 12y agoYou're seriously overestimating the quality of the Palestinian rockets. See this http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/dissecting-idf-propaganda-the-numbers-behind-the-rocket-attacks.html http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/dissecting-idf-propaganda-the-... article for the numbers. 12000 fired rockets yielding 26 casualties over a ten year period is not a good record. The number are from before the Iron Dome became operative.