If the military conflicts of the last decade have taught us anything, it’s that the computer is one of the most dangerous weapons in the history of warfare. Computers have proven invaluable in offensive and defensive systems, simplified the gathering of real time intelligence, and have granted militaries with the technology that has the ability to selectively target locations and individuals with incredible accuracy. War, like every other aspect of our lives, has changed radically in the 200 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1812, just as they had for the previous millennium, the residents of Jerusalem lived inside of the old city, which housed 10,000 people protected from nomadic raiders by the city’s ancient walls. Nestled safely inside of the Ottoman Empire and more or less fully recovered from Napoleon’s incursions, life within the city went on as it always had. Being the home to three of the world’s great religions, Jerusalem was a city of ancient tensions and territorial disputes, where turning down the wrong street could cost you your life. Uprisings against the Ottomans and the eternal blood feuds against each other were fought with single fire muskets and cannon, with scimitars and occasionally, cavalry charges.
A century later, it was sunset for the Ottomans, and despite the dying empire’s best effort, the Zionist movement had taken hold, and the Jews were steadily returning to their ancient homeland. With Great Britain’s capture of Palestine during WWI awaiting in the future, a thousand little groups, Muslim, Christian, and Jew all fought the other for control of their own slice of the city and the land surrounding it only now with the new innovations of machine guns, grenades, and mortar shell. Jump ahead a half century and things had changed even more radically. The Six-Day War of 1967 was thoroughly modern warfare in the post WWII manner, with fighter aircraft, heavy tanks, artillery barrages and missiles. And now here we are in late 2012 where a combination of the traditional boots on the ground soldier, the heavy equipment of attack helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, and fighter jets is increasingly intermixed with a reliance on robotics and remote control military systems, bringing about yet another fundamental change in how the people go about warring with each other.
Iron Dome Command Site
Developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, with a price tag of approximately $200 million per unit, and backed with an estimated 90 percent success rate, Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense shield is getting high praise throughout the Israeli Defense Forces, as well as the broader international defense community. Operational since April 2011, the “Iron Dome” is a mobile all-weather missile defense system designed for the purpose of intercepting and destroying missiles, short-range rockets, and artillery shells with a range of up to 70 kilometers.
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Designed to provide overwhelming radar protection over a limited area, the Iron Dome system is proving to be an ideal defensive system for Israel, a small country slightly larger than New Jersey facing a hostile border with the Gaza only 21 miles long and six miles across at its widest point. Inside of these limited borders, the Iron Dome is proving to be an extremely formidable partnership of radar, computer imaging, and rapid fire missile deployment. The Israeli developed system presents a powerful argument in favor of continued investment and implementation of highly complicated but demonstrably accurate computer-controlled military systems.
Iron Dome Launch Unit
Outsourced by Rafael to another Israeli defense contractor, Eltna Systems, the Detection and Radar Tracking unit, is portable and placed outside of the chosen strike zone. Capable of curtaining an area of up to 40 kilometers with radar waves, the detection unit identifies targets and then monitors their trajectory while transmitting the target data to a second unit, an RV like Battle Management Weapon Control. Inside of the BMC, computers generate a threat message examined by military technicians, who quickly make the decision to fire or hold. If the command is given, a signal is sent out to a portable Firing Unit, containing three launchers, each holding 20 Tamir Interceptor Missiles. At a cost of $90,000 each or $5 half-million dollars for a full 60-missile salvo, the Tamir Missile carries a 25-pound explosive warhead capable of destroying any flying object it comes close enough to contact. The overall cost per unit is priced in at just over $200 million, but the cost for Israel has been offset by the United States, which has partnered with the Israelis on research and implementation costs, with the technology being shared jointly by both nations. Since May 2011, through the upswing of violence in the Gaza/Israeli conflict during the last two weeks, the system successfully shot down more than 400 missiles and artillery shells launched from the Gaza Strip and a reported additional 274 in November 2012 alone.
Israeli soldiers operating Iron Dome tracking systems
The major drawback to the system really comes down to bang for your buck. Israel has spent around $1 billion building five of these systems and providing coverage over the Gaza and Tel Aviv in the North. However, as noted earlier, the Gaza Strip is a small, geographically-contained area, and that means Israel spends almost $1 billion containing an area that would fit inside the San Francisco Bay. At the same time, several million people, as well as a large portion of Israel’s industrial base, are located within range of the missile attacks. This makes it much harder to argue about the economics of the system, especially in the face of such a strong success system wide. And that successful, remote-controlled computer defense system with the equally successful offensive drone systems is clearly going to lead to a growing reliance on the use of remote-controlled systems throughout the twenty-first century. Where the path of computer-controlled warfare will lead us is yet to be seen; however, one clear prediction is that for the nations that possess this technology, the battlefield advantage offensively and defensively, is theirs.
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