Thread by @TrentTelenko

This thread is about the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system - based on both recent events & my July 2014 Chicagoboyz blog post - that addresses the "Asymmetrical War" & Cold War ABM defense myths applied to Iron Dome versus its reality.
1/

I named that Chicagoboyz post as follows:

Iron Dome: Winning Asymmetric Warfare Through Superior Cost Accounting

...for some good reasons I'll expand on in this thread.
2/
web.archive.org/web/2020102115…

Graphics like this represent the innumerate "Magical Thinking" that passes for true cost - benefit analysis regards asymmetrical warfare.

It simply does not work this way.
3/

To begin with, that infographic of the cost of Hamas rockets excludes the cost of digging & outfitting the underground production facilities or smuggling price mark up to get the precursor explosive & rocket chemicals through Egyptian & Israeli border security.
4/

I count 42 Tamir rocket exhausts in this photo.

At $25,000 US dollars for each new Tamir, that works out to $1,050,000 for the pictured interceptors.

Each Tamir is being guided to a Hamas rocket trajectory by an Iron Dome radar & computer that have been identified will be

5/

...impacting in a programed "keep out zone."

These keep out zones are priority defense locations, key infrastructure & highly populated areas.

Considering all the value of Israeli lives, serious injuries & property saved by these Tamir "Defense Blossoms." That is a bargain

6/

But don't take my word for it.

To evaluate Tamir defense versus Hamas rocket attack in terms of cost-benefit, you start with the fact that Iron Dome is ignoring Hamas rocket trajectories that land in places like farm fields & rural roads with low/no people. This 21st century
7/

...digital selectivity stacks very well with Israel's civil defense warning system of sirens & cellphone apps.

Next, you have to ask what is the price of a life or a serious injury prevented. Thus you need a insurance actuary or a life insurance table for that cost.
8/

I wrote that 2014 Chicagoboyz blogpost because there was an easily available document that did just that.

It is called "The True Cost of Road Crashes: Valuing life and the cost of a serious injury" (cover photo & doc link attached)
9/
web.archive.org/web/2021051207…

A good friend took that report's actuarial cost model (attached photo) and did the calculations of the official

* Value of Statistical Life (VSL) and
* Value of Serious Injuries (VSI)

for Israeli rocket injuries the 2006 Lebanon War & Gaza rocket fire from 2000 to 2010.
10/

I've placed the page link, the screen captured text & calculations here.

Trust me when I say click the link to read there and save your eyes from the screen captures.

alternatewars.com/BBOW/ABM/ABM_E…
11/

Considerations of digital selectivity and the economic cost avoidance that Iron Dome provides to Israeli policy makers was utterly missing from the 2014 criticisms of MIT physicist, media talking head, and so-called ‘missile-defense expert’ Ted Postol.
12/
web.archive.org/web/2014071710…

There are many problems with Prof. Postol's criticisms. But at heart, it is the one that most defense intellectuals share.

They are, one and all, learned cynics who "...know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
13/

Prof Postol made his bones with criticisms of the US Army Patriot missile's performance versus Scud missiles in the 1991 Gulf War and in 2003. He applied his Patriot critique in 2014 (see figures) to the Tamir, his focus was on the 'failure' to engage & destroy warheads...
14/

...by both missiles.

Postel's specific point was his analysis suggested Tamir's were not getting nose-to-nose, Tamir to rocket, warhead impacts 100% of the time and thus was a technical failure.
15/

Prof. Postel's arguments here are a tarted up version of the Late Cold War ABM debate with nuclear weapons.

Only destroying the warheads counted and anything less than 100% perfection was failure.

16/

This was the kind of straw man arguments defense intellectuals of the late 20th century loved to use in the "Star Wars" ABM debates.

You set up impossible to meet performance system requirements and say the system failed when they don't.
17/

Newsflash: Hamas rockets don't carry nukes!

If you can knock a rocket off course 300 yards into an empty field or highway by tagging it's tail.

That is mission accomplished.
18/

In a very real sense, Iron Dome is Asymmetric Warfare by a technologically advanced society on an irrational/suicidal opponent that has converted suicide terrorism into an economically affordable war of attrition that trades suicidal robots — Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor
20/

missiles plus traditional guided missiles from Jets or unmanned drones — for suicidal Hamas rocket crews & the civilian “human shield” infrastructure that hides them at a cost-trade off beneficial to the advanced western economy supported Westphalian Nation-State.
/End

@threadreaderapp unroll