[credit: Jerry Holbert]
Amid threats of attack issued by the Potemkin nation of North Korea and the United States' fear response augmenting its anti-missile defense system on the west coast comes the eyebrow raising information from Israel that its vaunted "Iron Dome" anti-missile defense system, built with American aid and technology, is not so much an "iron dome" as an iron sieve. B.O'Drama's first stop in his visit to the United States' client state was to inspect an installation of Iron Dome. Israelis claimed an official kill rate of 90%, later reduced to 87%, in the latest Gaza conflict. In light of the claimed combat effectiveness Congress pledged, in a time of domestic fiscal austerity, an additional $680 million for deployments through 2015. Congress spent an initial $275 million to begin deployment two years ago. The United States is co-producing two other anti-missle systems named "Arrow" and "David's Sling" with Israel. Not so fast, Congressmen, because Israel may be selling you billion dollar snake oil.An increasing number of weapons experts from both the US and Israel say their studies show that Iron Dome interceptors destroyed no more than 40% of incoming rockets. Many of the rockets launched by Palestinians were simply faulty or deflected. One former weapons testing expert for the Pentagon said flatly, "No military system is 90% effective." Tamir interceptors are relatively small, only 6 inches in diameter and ten feet long, and are intended to intercept short-range rockets. The interceptors rely on explosive warheads that fragment to destroy incoming rockets, but they have to get in proximity to be effective. Last November, Gaza militants fired some 1500 rockets at Israeli territory. Israeli defense officials say Iron Dome killed 421 rockets and missed 58, apparently the remainder were not targeted by air defense commanders.
