Iron Dome coverage has lacked context and misconstrued reality: A CNN article, for example, carried the headline How Iron Dome blocks rockets from Gaza, protects Israelis and described a system that had knocked down 56 rockets fired out of Gaza at a string of Israeli cities. The article suggests that the system is accurate and used only against rockets headed toward populated areas. It does not suggest that there is any question about the systems effectiveness. The New York Times, noted for its authoritative reporting, wrote that the Israeli Army contended Iron Dome intercepted about 27 percent of all the rockets fired between Monday night and midday Wednesday. But the Times did not indicate how many missiles had been targeted, leaving the efficiency of the Iron Dome system in this conflict unclear, even as the newspaper reported that Israel has said that the system has a success rate of nearly 90 percent in intercepting the missiles it is meant to thwart. The Times also put a headline over its online story—A Growing Arsenal of Homegrown Rockets Encounters Israel’s Iron Dome—that could be read as suggesting Israels missile defense was, overall, as effective as its name implies. And less rigorous news outlets were, of course, less rigorous in their analysis. The New York Post, for instance, reported that Israel foiled Hamas terrorist attacks from the air and sea. Ted Postol, an MIT-based missile defense expert and frequent Bulletin contributor, provided a dose of context to the Iron Dome coverage in a National Public Radio interview Wednesday. We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all, Postol said. It—my guess is maybe [it hits a targeted missile] 5 percent of the time—could be even lower. ... 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. Regular readers of the Bulletin are well aware of the long history of inflated claims of missile defense efficiency.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 04:03:49 +0000