Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of Tel Aviv University's Cyber Center and former head of research and development at the Ministry of Defense, spoke on Radio 103MF this morning (Monday) about the Iron Dome system's handling of the terrible massacre.
""Every technological system has a purpose. Iron Dome knows how to shoot down rockets, it doesn't know how to stop motorcycles and vans that cross the fence from one side to the other in 5 minutes. Every system has a purpose. Air defense systems, their purpose is to shoot down rockets or long-range missiles.
""But if there's a fence and you have settlements, and in the middle there aren't, for example, mines that can be placed between each other, there's nothing and I don't know what they're waiting for - then in the end someone can take the initiative, cross this area within 5 minutes and harm our forces, it has nothing to do with technology.".
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Regarding the laser system, will we be able to see it go into operation in the near future?
""Before October 7, the plan was to now introduce a system into the development process. This is not a fully operational system, but a semi-operational system that can be learned from. But a system in the full sense, where there are enough weapons that are everywhere and can provide extensive protection, like we have with Iron Dome - that will take I guess another two years or something like that.".
Let's talk about the Arrow system that managed to intercept a missile launched from Gaza.
""We started developing the Arrow back in the late 1980s, and it was the first anti-missile system we developed, even before Iron Dome and Magic Wand and everything that came after. The system is designed for long-range missiles. That is, if they fire from Yemen, or Iran, or even Iraq - if they fire at you from such ranges, the missile flies a long way. If it's a ballistic missile, say from Iran, it takes more than 10 minutes for it to reach Israel.
"Most of the missile's trajectory is outside the atmosphere at all, so we developed Arrow 2 and Arrow 3. Each arrow drops a little further and higher outside the atmosphere. The Houthis fired a few things at us. They fired a ballistic missile and the Arrow was activated against it, and they sent unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles. A cruise missile is not a ballistic missile, but rather a small aircraft with a bomb. Therefore, both against unmanned aerial vehicles and against cruise missiles - the classic way is to shoot them with other aircraft or all the usual surface-to-air missile means against aircraft.".
