Inexpensive fiber-optic drones are challenging Israel’s high-tech defenses, shifting the military balance in the Middle East.
A recent video showing an explosive-laden drone striking an Israeli Iron Dome battery couldn’t have been more symbolic: Israel’s famous air-defense system, which cost billions of euros, looked powerless against a small aircraft that cost a few hundred euros.
While the video’s authenticity has not yet been verified, experts believe it is genuine.
The footage was published about a week ago by Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based pro-Iranian militia, which Germany, the US and several Sunni Arab states have classified as a terrorist organization.
The drone strike, if genuine, would mark propaganda victory for Hezbollah and reveal a significant vulnerability in Israel’s military capabilities.
True, but not at the scale we are seeing. They don’t have enough interceptors to defend, and likely their opponents knew that this would play out this way. They simply can not out produce drones with those pricey interceptors.
People can count the number of launchers in a battery, and number of interceptors in a launcher. They can then take this information and send more cheap easy to produce drones vs the air defense systems. Once those systems are compromised they can strike with little opposition any target in the area that system covered, with little chance of the defenders being able to regain “missile/drone superiority” in that area. Its a wild thing to see but the iron dome concept on its own has a major flaw once the attacks come in cheap and heavy.
Very much agree. I think that volume in asymmetry will beat any defense, even the lazers.
I am no expert though.
Lazers are neat and could work well for ships or static facilities where the power systems can be defended and the area to defend is small. They don’t really have the same hard limits to overwhelm as more traditional systems, but who knows if other limits will be present like say number of targets they can engage at a time. Lets say its the case of 3 targets can be engaged at the same time and the time before impact gives the lazers 3 chances to eliminate (as they do need time on target for effect, its not quite starwars blasters), giving the system a limit of 9 per incoming volley. That would be easy to over come, but what if its not 3 but 300 and time allows 40 attempts? The systems could be fantastic, or a small speed bump.