{Printed originally at Liberty Unyielding website}
I’ll never forget the scene in the movie Independence Day when the missiles, artillery and even nukes fired by US forces were completely ineffectual in the face of the aliens’ force field technology. Indeed, no decent sci-fi plot is complete without the sight of earth militaries desperately pummeling the alien invader’s deflector shield with missiles, rockets, artillery and tank shells, all to no effect.
Prior to the invention of gunpowder, physical shields and strong city walls provided effective protection against the primitive ranged weapons of the day. But for over 1000 years cannon shells, bombs and rockets have been unstoppable offensive weapons that overwhelmed all physical defences.
Today, missiles of all sorts (guided), rockets (unguided), shells and bombs are the main weapons of all the world’s militaries and the only defence is to destroy the enemy’s launchers with your own accurate missiles, guided bombs and artillery.
But all this is about to change radically, because Israel has perfected and battle proven effective force fields / shields for its cities, bases and armoured vehicles. These systems can defeat every missile, rocket, shell and even bomb currently in existence by blowing them up mid-air before they can reach their target.
Israel’s Iron Dome has intercepted over 1,000 rockets aimed at Israeli cities, towns and infrastructure with a success rate of over 90% in 2014 – and steadily rising (from 84% in 2012). Advanced radar detects the incoming rocket, computers calculate the trajectory within seconds, and the system fires a Tamir interceptor missile which destroys the target. It can also destroy artillery shells and long range mortars. Despite over 4,500 deadly rockets fired at Israeli cities and towns during the recent 50-day conflict with Hamas, only two Israelis were killed by rocket fire (as opposed to short range mortars). One was in a remote desert area not covered by Iron Dome.
More Hamas rockets have landed in Gaza (causing many deaths) than have landed in Israeli urban areas.
Israel’s Trophy system has made Merkava IV tanks impervious to Hamas’s advanced Russian antitank missiles. The system detects the approach of a missile with advanced 360-degree radar and fires a countermeasure which blasts the approaching warhead to harmless shrapnel. It can stop not just the latest Russian anti-tank missiles but every anti-tank missile in Western inventories, including top-down attack missiles and helicopter- and aircraft-launched anti-tank missiles. Future versions will even be effective in damaging the latest armour-piercing discarding-sabot (APDS) tank shells so that they will be unable to penetrate the Merkava’s armour.
Israel’s Arrow 2 (in service) and Arrow 3 (in service 2015) systems can destroy long-range ballistic missiles, and David’s Sling (in service 2015) can destroy medium-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. Iron Beam (in final development) will use lasers to destroy the short-range mortar and artillery shells that Iron Dome can’t stop.
All of the above systems use variations on the same basic concept. Advanced radars detect, computers calculate trajectory, and interceptors (kinetic, explosive, or laser) destroy the approaching warhead at various stages of flight. The effect is the same as the force fields / shields of science fiction – even the most advanced ranged explosive weapons cannot penetrate.
Like other computer-based systems, these interception systems have a very rapid upgrade cycle that can outpace any attempts to modify weapons to outwit them. So far Iron Dome is beating the iPhone for major software and hardware upgrades and consequent performance increases. These include dramatic improvements in accuracy, coverage area, and maximum and minimum interception ranges in only two years. Israeli troops have made software changes on the fly to defeat all Hamas’s attempts to beat Iron Dome and improve performance.