Iron Dome ABM Success

By Taylor Marvin

Israel’s Iron Dome ballastic defense network successfully destroyed a short range rocket fired from Gaza yesterday. This is encouraging- short range ballistic defense networks have been notoriously difficult to actually build and deploy, and this type of technology, though easily overwhelmed, has the potential to greatly reduce civilian casualties in future conflicts. While the sustainability of using $50,000 missiles to shoot down $100 rockets has been questioned, a commenter at Defense Tech makes a good point- the high unit cost of ABM interceptors isn’t a bad trade when considering the medical costs of anyone unlucky enough to hit by the rockets.