Reuters, July 10th: Israel’s Iron Dome interceptor has shot down some 90 percent of Palestinian rockets it engaged during this week’s surge of Gaza fighting, up from the 85 percent rate in the previous mini-war of 2012. Professor Postol, your response? THEODORE POSTOL: Well, first of all, I am sorry to say that the press needs to engage in more due diligence on these matters. Where does this number come from? The number comes from an Israeli spokesperson. Now, if I give a number—and, incidentally, I have a long record of being correct on these matters—you don’t hear the press coming to me and asking me, do I believe that number is correct? And if I don’t believe the number is correct, why would I not believe the number is correct? This is really—you can really put this back on the due diligence of the press with regard to this matter. They’re just not—they’re just accepting information from an interested party. AMY GOODMAN: So can you explain further how this works, how the Iron Dome—how Raytheon built this? THEODORE POSTOL: Well, the Iron Dome is mostly an Israeli development, although Raytheon is involved. The Iron Dome interceptor has to approach an incoming artillery rocket head-on. So if you saw an Iron Dome interceptor flying a near-vertical trajectory, that would indicate the Iron Dome interceptor is in a near-head-on engagement geometry coming at the artillery rocket. In that geometry, the interceptor has some chance of destroying the artillery rocket warhead. If you see the Iron Dome interceptor engaging the artillery rocket from the side or from the back by chasing it, then it has essentially a zero chance of destroying the artillery rocket warhead. So, if you look up in the sky and you look at the hundreds of videos we now have of the contrails of the—the smoke trails of the Iron Dome interceptors, you can see that almost all the time—there are exceptions, but almost all the time—the Iron Dome interceptors are traveling parallel to the ground, which means that the falling artillery rocket is engaged from the side, or the Iron Domes are—the Iron Dome interceptors are diving to the ground, which means that they are trying to chase artillery rockets from behind. All those engagements are zero probability of intercept. And we’re guessing—we’re guessing, based on what we have, that maybe 10 percent or 15 or 20 percent of the engagements are head-on. Actually, it’s not 20 percent; it’s closer to 10 percent. And when you see so few engagements head on, your conclusion is that the system is not working the vast majority of the time. Now, when you—
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 19:30:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015