Israel's Iron Dome 100mph Drone Hole Consumption Point Changes to 'Iran Attack'
Israel's air defense system, Iron Dome, was designed for 1,000mph missiles, but a 100mph drone detection error required a 'redesign', and the 'attack on Iran's nuclear oil facilities' was stopped due to a defensive weakness.
Minutes before Hezbollah's deadly drone attack on a military base in northern Israel last weekend, Israeli police reported a suspicious aircraft to the Air Force, but the Air Force told them not to worry because it was a small Israeli aircraft, and the Air Force's assessment turned out to be wrong, and shortly thereafter, Hezbollah's attack killed four Israeli soldiers and injured dozens more.
As Israel's defensive weaknesses were revealed, Israeli media outlets urged the Israeli military to investigate, and the New York Times reported on the 14th that the military's chief spokesman acknowledged the vulnerability, saying on the 13th, "We have to provide a better defense," the New York Times reported.
The Washington Post reported on the 14th, citing an official, that “Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu conveyed his intention to strike military facilities, not nuclear or oil-related facilities, in a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on the 9th.”
“It was so disappointing because we called and warned them 10 minutes before the attack,” said Viki Kadosh, one of the civilians who discovered the drone, in an interview with the Israeli military-run radio station Galei Tzahal on the 13th. “We found it flying very low, right over our house. As soon as we heard the sound it made, we knew something was wrong.”
The New York Times reported that “the drone strikes have raised alarms as Israel prepares for a potential escalation of tensions with Iran,” and that “while Israel has the world’s best radar system for detecting and intercepting missiles that can travel at speeds of more than 1,000 miles per hour, it has found that its radar system is more difficult to detect when the drones are moving slowly, sometimes at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour.”
Previous drone strikes by Iran have not always raised alarms due to “less metal” and “less heat.” The Israeli military acknowledged the weakness of its air defenses, saying that even when enemy drones are detected, they are often mistaken for Israeli aircraft, including small private planes, because the drones fly at similarly low altitudes and speeds. “All of these systems, not just in Israel but in the Western world, are built to defend or protect our airspace from conventional fighters and missiles,”
Ofer Haruvi, a former head of the Israeli Air Force’s drone division, told the Times. “Some of these systems need to be redesigned to be able to see, detect and track these kinds of slow-moving targets.”
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket systems have destroyed most of the rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon, and Arrow 3 interceptors played a key role in stopping two Iranian ballistic missile strikes on April 13 and October 1, but experts are skeptical. Israel's Iron Dome defense system can intercept rockets flying in a high arc, and the Arrow 3 system can stop ballistic missiles flying out of the atmosphere, but support from the United States and Britain and other Western countries is essential.
Israel said that the Iron Dome and Arrow 3, the main weapons in its multi-layered air defense system, shot down most of the missiles and drones in the April attack, but the rest were shot down by the United States and other allies, the New York Times reported.
After Israel's air defenses were breached, the United States announced on the 6th that it would send Israel another missile defense system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, to strengthen its defense system. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which went into operation in 2011, can intercept a wide range of rockets and missiles flying in high arcs. When Gaza militants fired about 1,500 rockets toward Israel in November 2014, Israeli officials claimed a 90 percent success rate in the war during the first large-scale test over eight days. However, the new system, which relies entirely on U.S. dollars and technology support, was met with skepticism from outside experts about its success rate from the beginning, the New York Times reported.
Former U.S. President Obama toured the facility on March 19, 2013, to commemorate the installation of Iron Dome. Iron Dome was touted as having a 90 percent success rate in the Gaza conflict in November 2012, and Congress has pledged an additional $680 million by 2015, citing the system as “highly effective.”
The New York Times reported on March 20, 2013, that “experts estimate that Iron Dome destroys less than 40 percent of the incoming warheads, or perhaps even less,” and that “experts argue that many rockets simply crippled or bounced off, and often failed, with intact or dying rockets landing in populated areas.”
The New York Times said that Israeli officials at the time said the 90 percent success rate was simply a result of video footage analysis, which led Congress to decide on additional dollar aid.
The New York Times stated that experts believe that “intercept airburst” is not a success rate, but a simple explosion of the interceptor warhead, which is different from a hit.
The exaggerated success rate of Iron Dome continued to be built as a pretext for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities.
The process of developing a missile defense system created a tactical strategy for directly attacking key facilities by exaggerating the success rate. In the case of Iron Dome, the performance issue is a major issue, as it provided a ‘zero’ estimate in response to retaliatory attacks, including damage from rockets fired from southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, in Israel’s repeated attempts to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in a ‘defense-offensive’ manner, and this strategy appears to have been applied to the recent strikes on Lebanon and Iran by the Netanyahu government.
Iron Dome is Israel’s newest and smallest anti-missile system. Measuring just 6 inches wide and 10 feet long, the interceptor relies on small sensors and a computerized brain to target its specialty, short-range rockets and detonate the warheads on board.
Israel’s larger interceptors, the Patriot and Arrow systems, were built to fly longer distances to pursue larger threats, but both systems use explosive warheads to destroy enemy targets, drawing skeptical reviews of the warheads’ performance and military value.
While weapons critics have said that the aerial explosion in the sky is not proof of success, Israeli and American arms exporting defense companies have confirmed the success rate of 90% based on the 'air explosion', and this time, the air defense network system vulnerable to low-altitude, low-speed drone flight has lost trust, and Israel announced on the 14th that it will 'stop attacking Iranian facilities'.
Although it is an air defense missile, the interceptor warhead explosion and the shoot-down explosion are not professionally distinguished and are excluded from the evaluation, and as vulnerabilities continue to be revealed, Iron Dome was upgraded in 2021, but the details of the changes were not disclosed, and this low-altitude drone attack exposed vulnerabilities.
The NYT said that experts said Israel is particularly vulnerable to 'anti-drone systems' and needs improvement.
“Anti-drone systems primarily rely on radar, designed to detect relatively large, metal objects like airplanes, by transmitting a signal and receiving the echoes of that signal back,” Onn Fenig, head of R2 Wireless, a company that designs drone detection systems and works with the Israeli military, told the Times. “Alternatives include receptors that passively detect and classify the radio waves emitted by drones, optical sensors that scan the sky for visual signatures of drones, and acoustic sensors that detect the sound of drone engines.” “All of these systems have strengths and weaknesses,” he told the Times. “Israel needs to combine them to create a more robust drone detection system, and even if it were implemented, there would be no magic bullet that would solve all our problems. We would have to completely change our mindset.”