Major US armsmaker Raytheon Technologies has announced a joint venture with Israel’s Rafael to make Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system inside the United States, with an eye toward sending it to “allies across the globe.”
Raytheon emphasized how successful Israel says Iron Dome is, citing a 90% success rate. That’s used to intercept the makeshift Palestinian rockets, and it is broadly untested with respect to proper missiles or other weapons.
MIT has done studies on Iron Dome as an interceptor missile, concluding that the success rate is a “deception” and that it is a system which “hardly works,” and almost certainly would have a success rate less than 10 percent.
Historically this was important because US aid is used to pay for the Israeli system. If the system doesn’t work, however, it’s likely something other potential customers may want to be aware of.
it is sensible that the US would spend huge sums on ineffective trash
It is just another means to transfer a chunk of the U. S, Treasury to the land of the grifter.
Good to know our Congress will be stealing more money to pay Israeli companies to sell us defective junk.
a gem from the article’s internal link: “the Army has struggled to integrate Iron Dome into its IBCS system, mostly because the Israeli government has refused to provide critical source code needed for the integration.”
bingo!
I have, personally worked for (and against) Raytheon. To me, their motto has always been, “Not a dime leaves the house” – so it surprises me for them to partner with anyone. Maybe, Israel is more of a bed partner than a financial one.
If you think Israel is going to sell us their system, on par with their system, I can sell you a machine that turns cow dung into gold.
Antarcticus presented a great blog. Note: Israel “refused to provide critical source code needed for integration”.
It is like selling a car that has no distributor. It’s a car, But it will not run.
Who would be firing the missiles as the US anyway? How is a system designed to stop kartusha rockets going to be any better than what the US has now against a North Korean ICBM even assuming one made it through?