***Rampant Speculation Alert***
**Remember, I Write Fiction**
Congress passed a $1B funding package to Israel to restock the Iron Dome defense system. The legislation passed by an astonishing 420-to-9 vote.
Let's look at Iron Dome from a few different perspectives:
Minimum response
Iron Dome allows Israel to swat incoming rockets out of the sky.
It seems like poor economics to use expensive, guided missiles to shoot down dirt-cheap unguided rockets but there is more in-play than just the munitions.
Without Iron Dome, Israel would have to mobilize the military and make bombing runs with $20 million aircraft. Iron Dome allows Israel to move this response further back in the escalation hierarchy.
One would think that pro-Palestinians would WANT Iron Dome replenished unless their goal is to provoke an all-out, final war.
Cheap testing
Israel offers the US real-world testing of the missiles. Most of the "incoming" are trash 107mm Chinese and Iranian rockets but every once in a while they slip in something faster and more exotic.
Not to bad-mouth 107mm rockets. They can kill people just as dead as other weapons. What I am trying to communicate is that the 107mm rocket is something that a competent machinist and a chemist with unlimited access to chicken-shit and powdered aluminum can probably produce them on an industrial scale.
Secure software
An underappreciated fact is that progress in material sciences and wing-design flat-lined. That is why the service life of aircraft, for instance, increased by over an order of magnitude.
The path to having better weapons than the enemy is to have better electronics and better software.
The problem with developing software in the US is that our institutions are riddled with spies. That problem may exist in Israel but to a much, much lower degree.
It seems highly unlikely that we just sell them the hardware without a quid pro quo arrangement regarding software enhancements the Israelis implement.
From the standpoint of integrating software with the hardware, when security really matters, Israel is one of the few viable options.
Dystopian future
Iron Dome serves the same function as a moat. It is a barrier that prevents the riff-raff from scaling the walls of the castle.
Yes, I know "everybody" is talking about right-wing, white supremacists but everybody with three-digit IQs knows the real risks are from unvetted immigrants and from the angry, un-skilled young men whose strong-backs no longer command a living wage in the modern economy.
But if The-Powers-that-Be were to acknowledge the risk of immigrants then they would have to stop illegal immigration and they cannot do that because of a multitude of interlocking reasons.
Israel is the beta-test for Iron Dome over D.C. and other elite enclaves.
THAT is why it passed 420-9
While there are many places that Iron Dome would be useful, I don't feel DC is one of them, it would be far easier to sneak something in than to build a rocket and attack that way.
ReplyDeleteAlso, their utilities are outside; attacking them would have a ripple effect inside the secured area.
There are also people in the US who build larger better rockets for fun. MIRVs and steerable warheads throw off intercept systems, decoys can fool them also.
Would the iron dome system stop a crop duster with a suitcase nuke flying in at roof top level? Asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteSince the time of Mathias Rust, if not since long before that, that eventuality must have occurred to the Secret Service, who are paid to plan against such possibilities.
DeleteProbably not, it's designed for high speed ballistic targets. An anti aircraft system on a hill would be a better defense, or an aerial targeting radar.
DeleteThe Israeli's enemy is localized and has only one viable stand-off attack so a focused defense system like Iron Dome is effective. Over here the most vulnerable parts of the infrastructure are distributed and mostly in disputed territory. That's fertile ground for timed attacks VERY similar to the beginning of our Esteemed Host's Home Field Advantage stories. Water and waste treatment plants high value targets, and power distribution lines are so extended they are almost impossible to completely protect.
ReplyDelete"Israel is the beta-test for Iron Dome over D.C. and other elite enclaves."
ReplyDeleteInteresting.