While the true extent of Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Israel remains unclear, the Islamic Republic has for two weeks managed to strike both military and civilian infrastructure across Israel. Verified video, reported by Fox News no less, shows salvos of Iranian missiles over the skies of Tel Aviv, launched in response to a US and Israeli air campaign. Many appear to be hitting their targets on the ground. The very sight of these missiles suggests that Arrow 3, the Israeli missile defense system designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere, has at least partly malfunctioned.
As for the lower atmosphere, the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, which also require US ammunition, made by hand in the United States with long production times at extraordinary cost, increasingly appear to be white elephants in the face of Iran’s counterattack. In its Twelve-Day War in June, the US used up a quarter of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles in the defense of Israel. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see that the myth of Israeli invincibility is being exposed.
But according to rocket scientists themselves, the picture is even worse. Ted Postol, a professor emeritus of science, technology, and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former adviser at the Pentagon, says that the interception rate against ballistic counterattacks is at most one in twenty. “People have been told by the Israelis it’s an 87 percent intercept rate, and that is absolutely false. It’s been below 5 percent right from the beginning,” says Postol. “So from the beginning of Iron Dome, we have seen very, very low intercept rates on that system. . . . The air defenses have had no meaningful contribution except as political theater.” Postol is just one of a number of scientists and scholars, including several Pentagon insiders as well as Israeli engineers, who have for years questioned Israel’s claims about…
Auteur: Arron Reza Merat
