Iron dome

In this spring of 2021, unfortunately, the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians resumed. I do not enter the events that are now sinking into a tangled complex of accusations.

However, what has been seen in recent days is the Israeli defense in action. The Iron Dome, or missiles that intercept other missiles. From the agencies they say that Hamas and partly from Syria have been launched a considerable number, almost two thousand in a single week.

The (real) reason why so many are launched we will understand shortly.

But what is the Iron Dome? It is a joint project between the United States and Israel. It is a network of mobile stations that can be set up in about 30 minutes and consist of a battery of 20 Tamir missiles, a radar system and a management system called " Battle Management & Weapon Control - BMC" which allows in addition to the various calculations also the link with the central stations.

Basically, from the radars of the mobile stations they are able to establish in real time the rise of enemy rockets. Timing is essential because the alert time is very short. Between thirty seconds for the areas closest to the Gaza Strip per minute for Tel Aviv.

The rockets that are launched have a propulsion system typical of these systems, but have movable wings that allow directionality, as well as a small booster approximately halfway through the body, which allows very rapid turns.

When the counter-rocket manages to make contact with the enemy missile, that is, it is close enough to it, it detonates causing the counterpart to detonate it immediately.

The system has been in development for over 10 years, and according to Israeli military defense statements it is 90% effective. Some external analysts say that it would be 80% which in any case is a significant percentage considering the complications and the very high state of unpredictability.

In fact, from the videos you can even see two rockets trying to lock onto a target, then when one of the two gets there first the other turns instantly towards another. Clearly the operating systems are not completely known, it is presumed that there is hardware components that allow a software to act partly by itself, partly by input from the central system. I guess they have an infrared scanner that allows you to see the heat trace. The software is able to trace a probable trajectory such as to allow an interception.

Hamas in fact has an arsenal with several types of rockets, about twelve or thirteen. However, they are ballistic rockets with different radii. The more powerful one has a range of 250 km. However, they do not have a guidance system or some autonomous system, so their trajectory once identified should become predictable.

So this Dome is impenetrable? No, because there is a difference between 10 and 20%. A fork that is predictable, however, is going to get thinner. In fact, at the beginning of the project the effectiveness was very low, it was even estimated at 5% while today we have seen the impressive progression. Already now if a rocket is calculated that it ends up in an uninhabited area they ignore it, but the greater the usage data, the greater the effectiveness.

However, and here we come to the real reason why Hamas launches so many rockets, is that Iron Dome has one level of saturation, or rather I assume two levels. One greater being the number of Tamir rockets and the battery recharge time, the other being the noise of the various thermal traces. This level is not known, so the attempts to try to find this level of collapse are increasing and will continue to increase.

I personally believe that Hamas has already lost. Even considering that they have an infinite number of rockets, which is not at all obvious, as I said above, the level of precision of the system will become more and more efficient. Besides, I think they are already implementing a counter-attack system in addition to defense. If they are able to draw thermal routes, they are also able to know the exact starting position. The only thing that would change the cards on the table is precisely a hardware and software technological level that allows decision-making autonomy to the system itself. Which, however, they do not have, and even if they are not able to understand, neither they nor their allies.