David's iron and deep dome: how is the sophisticated Israel Air Defense System that Iran has managed to overcome

The attacks have left at least 24 dead and 271 wounded in Israel since the beginning of the offensive, according to data from the Israeli government.

On the other side, at least 639 Iranians have died and more than 1,300 have been injured by Israel's attacks, according to Human Rights American NGO estimates.

The smallest number of Israeli casualties responds largely to the high efficacy of the iron dome that, however, has proven to be invulnerable.

We analyze the powerful Israel defense system.

The air defense system that Israel has been building in recent years has several layers, being the Iron dome or dome (Kipat Barzel, in Hebrew) the last. The reason? It is designed to neutralize nearby threats.

The system, developed by the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems LTD and Israel Aerospace Industries, was put into operation in 2011 and is able to destroy short -range rockets; that is, those thrown from distances of up to 70 kilometers.

The dome was developed after the war that Israel maintained with the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2006, with the purpose of knocking down the rockets that this organization, financially backed by Iran, constantly launched from the south of Lebanon, as well as the projectiles that Hamas fired from the Gaza Strip against Israeli territory.

The system has three components: a detection and monitoring radar, a control post and the missile launcher armed with up to 20 Tamir missiles.

Its manufacturer ensures that the dome has an effectiveness of 90%.

How does it work? When a rocket is triggered to Israel, the radar detects it and follows its trajectory, while computers in the control system perform rapid and complex calculations to determine its trajectory and forecast whether the projectile can hit urban or strategic areas.

From these calculations, the system decides which rockets should be intercepted and which are not.

If the rocket is directed towards a populated area, a military base or another key installation, the pitcher automatically triggers the Tamir missile, and the rocket is destroyed in the air, thus neutralizing the threat.

Tamir are launched vertically from mobile or static units, which gives the system great flexibility.

However, unlike other interceptors, these rockets are different, because they do not directly hit their goal.

“It is a weapon of proximity, so it approaches its target enough to then explode and thus neutralize it,” explained the retired colonel from the US army Mark Cancan, to the CBS chain.

A single battery consists of three or four pitchers, and Israel has at least 10 batteries.

The dome manufacturer ensures that until now more than 2,000 interceptions have achieved.

These data allowed you to qualify this anti -aircraft system as “the most used in the world, and by far, currently.”

Each Tamir missile costs between US $ 35,000 and US $ 50,000. In addition, a complete iron dome battery has an approximate value of US $ 100 million, according to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

But the dome is not the only weapon of the Israeli air defense system. Two other key pieces are David's sling and the family of Balistic missiles Arrow 2 and 3, which allow the country to defend the projectiles thrown from farther sites such as Iran or Yemen.

David's Honda, in honor of the biblical passage in which the Hebrew King demolished the giant Philistine with a stone, was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the American Raytheon in order to neutralize threats to greater distances, up to 300 kilometers.

This system already demonstrated its effectiveness in 2023, when it destroyed two rockets launched by Islamic jihad against the cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, according to the Israeli press.

How is it different from the dome? “You can hit a broader range of objectives, not only rockets, but cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones and airplanes,” Cantancan explained.

Another distinctive element of the Honda missiles is that they do directly hit their whites, thanks to a series of sensors with which they are equipped.

Also, these projectiles have two phases, such as those used to launch satellites into space.

Meanwhile, the Arrow system is made up of hypersonic missiles; That is, they can travel beyond the speed of sound (five times, according to their manufacturer).

This system was also developed at the end of the 20th century by US and Israeli companies, and their rockets operate at great altitude, more than 100 kilometers from the ground, which allows them to neutralize or achieve objectives more than 2,400 kilometers away.

“The long-range interceptors Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 occurred taking into account the threat of Iranian missiles and are designed to attack threats both inside and outside the atmosphere, respectively,” reads a report published by the CSIS.

“The Arrow use a two -stage solid fuel propeller to reach speeds of up to Mach 9,” says the same center.

American media have reported that Arrow can be triggered before the white potential trajectory has been determined and that, once in the stratosphere, they can quickly change direction.

“To attack the objectives, the rocket has a destructive vehicle with fins and an explosive fragmentation eye, which can focus its explosion on a specific direction,” is added in the CSIS report.

“And if the missile fails to directly impact the target, this ojiva detonates at a distance of between 40 and 50 meters of the target,” the report ends.

The aviation and marine of allied countries of Israel, fundamentally the United States and the United Kingdom, are part of the other leg of the country's protection against air attacks of their enemies.

In previous attacks, F15 US fighters, British Typhoon aircraft and war ships knocked down numerous Iranian projectiles launched by Hamas and Hezbollah.

“The alliances are very important for Israel, which, although it has a powerful army, is very dependent on its allies in defense,” Thomas Juneau, a professor of international studies at the University of Ottawa (Canada) and specialist in Middle East issues told CBS.

Some experts doubt the effectiveness of 90% that Israel attributes to its air defense system and remember that the iron dome, for example, does not shoot at all objectives, but only against those that represent a true threat to strategic lives and goods.

Likewise, the fact that in recent years several rockets have hit Israeli populated areas, causing injuries and damage, revealed that the airspace of airspace is not total.

Already in 2021 an incident questioned the reliability of the famous iron dome, when during a mass launch of rocket from Gaza against the coastal city of Ascalón “a technical problem prevented some rockets being intercepted, and this could have caused the death of two women and dozens of injured”, according to the newspaper Times of Israel.

And the current conflict again demonstrates that the Israeli system is not infallible, with the arrival of Iranian missiles that have caused damage to important infrastructure, such as the Haifa refinery, and in densely populated urban areas.

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