What is Israel’s Iron Dome?

The recent escalation of violence between Israel and Gaza has made headlines globally.  Many of these stories have mentioned Israel’s Iron Dome. What is this Iron Dome?

The Iron Dome missile defence system, the BBC explains, has its roots in the 2006 war that Israel fought with Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah movement.

Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets towards Israel, causing huge damage and killing dozens of Israelis.

A year later, Israel announced that it was developing a new missile defence shield.

The system took years to develop and came online in early 2011.

Since then, the Iron Dome system has been used to intercept rockets regularly launched from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.

The system uses radar to track incoming rockets, and then fires two interceptor missiles to knock them out.

According to Wikipedia, “the Iron Dome is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. 

“The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometres to 70 kilometres away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area.

“Israel hopes to increase the range of Iron Dome’s interceptions, from the current maximum of 70 kilometres to 250 kilometres and make it more versatile so that it could intercept rockets coming from two directions simultaneously.”

Timeline of defences

“Iron Dome was declared operational and initially deployed on 27 March 2011 near Beersheba. 

“On April 7, 2011, the system successfully intercepted a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza for the first time. 

“On March 10, 2012, The Jerusalem Post reported that the system shot down 90% of rockets launched from Gaza that would have landed in populated areas.

“By November 2012, official statements indicated that it had intercepted over 400 rockets.

“By late October 2014, the Iron Dome systems had intercepted over 1,200 rockets.

“In addition to their land-based deployment, Iron Dome batteries will in the future be deployed at sea on Sa’ar 6-class corvettes, where they will protect off-shore gas platforms in conjunction with Israel’s Barak 8 missile system.

“Iron Dome is part of a future multi-tiered missile defense system that Israel is developing, which includes ‘Arrow 2’, ‘Arrow 3’, ‘Iron Beam’, ‘Barak 8’ and ‘David’s Sling’.”

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