July 10, 2014
In Blog
SIEGEL: The Israelis claimed that a missile out of Gaza – a rocket out of Gaza that was headed toward Tel Aviv, which would be relatively long-range given their history…
POSTOL: Probably 60 or 50 or 70 kilometers.
SIEGEL: They say it was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. How would – how successful is that system, in your view?
POSTOL: We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all. It – my guess is maybe 5 percent of the time – could be even lower.
SIEGEL: As I understand it, for it to work it actually has to hit an oncoming rocket head on.
POSTOL: That’s correct. And when you look – what you can do in the daytime – you can see the smoky contrail of each Iron Dome interceptor, and you can see the Iron Domes trying to intercept the artillery rockets side on and from behind. In those geometries, the Iron Dome has no chance, for all practical purposes, of destroying the artillery rocket.
SIEGEL: By way of contrast, when the Israeli Air Force strikes at targets in Gaza, is the weaponry substantially more accurate than these rockets?
POSTOL: When you’re talking about an airstrike from an aircraft, especially with the very, very highly trained pilots Israelis have and, of course, the very advanced equipment that they’re using, you’re talking about precisions of tens of meters – very, very high precision.
SIEGEL: On the other hand, tens of meters in, let’s say a dense place like Gaza City – that could be three houses away.
POSTOL: You’re going to kill a lot of innocent people.
SIEGEL: Yeah, yeah.