Progressive Democrats Succeed in Removing $1 Billion Iron Dome Funding From Bill

[TiberiusB]

74. That isn't what happened

The Iron Dome isn't engineered to intercept every missile. Since the Qassam rockets are completely unguided and highly inaccurate with fairly weak warheads, the system relies on predictive targeting to only aim for those rockets that are likely to strike populated or important targets. That is likely where the "90%" and "86%" claims come from as the targeted missiles are only a small fraction of the total fired. Haaretz has an article on this:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-gaza-cease-hostilities-netanyahu-campaign-not-over-1.7208366

In the article, they discuss the launch of 690 missiles, but only 240 were intercepted. That's a kill rate of 35%. However, if the system only actively targeted 261 missiles, then the "success rate" can be seen as 90%.

Also, 4 people were killed by that attack. If we assume the 261 number is correct, then 21 missiles got through, translating to approximately one civilian death for every 5 missiles launched. We know some 600+ missiles crashed or went off course, so that leaves roughly 3700, and assuming the Iron Dome failed completely, then the potential casualty count would have been around 740 civilians. That's literally not thousands. The majority of the missiles were not targeted, however, as they were not deemed a sufficient threat. If we go by the 35% targeting rate from the Haaretz article, that means that the total number of dangerous missiles was closer to 1300. This may be where the IDF number came from. That would also mean that the potential maximum civilian casualty count would have been closer to 260 or less.