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Iron Dome is not GMD

by Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr.

The Israeli Iron Dome rocket/artillery defense system is touted as destroying 85 to 90 percent of the targets it attacks. U.S. Senator Ron Paul (R-KY) was so intrigued by Iron Dome’s success during a visit to Israel that, upon returning home, he advocated deploying the system in U.S. cities.

While few if any other missile defense advocates go that far, several supporters of the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse national missile defense system (GMD) believe that Iron Dome’s purported success is testimony to the potential effectiveness of GMD. Yet these are two very different systems.

Iron Dome, first deployed in 2011, is designed to target small, unguided, inaccurate, slow- and low-flying rockets fired from four to 70 kilometers away from the defensive system. The rockets’ trajectories travel entirely in the atmosphere. An Iron Dome battery consists of an S-Band phased array radar, a fire control element, and three launchers, each armed with 20 explosive-tipped, proximity-fused Tamir interceptors, which are three meters long.

GMD faces the far more daunting task of intercepting warheads in space that are delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles. In the space environment, debris from the booster rocket and countermeasures designed to spoof the defense fly together with, and at the same speed as, the attacking warhead, making it difficult for the interceptor to distinguish between the warhead and non-lethal objects. Impact hit-to-kill vehicles must try to find and collide with warheads traveling 15,000 miles per hour.

Iron Dome, known as a low-tiered capability, is one of three systems Israel is developing to provide a layered missile defense complex. The other two have not yet been employed in combat.

The Arrow is the top-tiered system, intended to intercept tactical ballistic missiles. Its development was accorded high priority after the first Gulf War, when Iraq attacked Israel with Scud missiles. Arrow II, with an explosive warhead, was first deployed in 2000. Arrow III, which had its second successful flight test in January 2014, is being designed in collaboration with the U.S. Boeing company to employ an impact hit-to-kill interceptor to engage intermediate range ballistic missiles in space. Arrow III, not Iron Dome, is similar to GMD.

David’s Sling, also called Magic Wand, is a mid-tier system under development in cooperation U.S. defense contractor Raytheon. It is being designed to intercept high velocity medium and long range rockets, cruise missiles and short range ballistic missiles. It had its first successful intercept test in November 2012, but has not yet been operationally deployed.  

However successful Iron Dome may be, it cannot serve as a harbinger for the potential of GMD. It is no more a harbinger than a Ford Fiesta is for a Ferrari. They are very different systems.

Nuclear Weapons in the Next Generation: Reflections on Generation Prague

Last week, I attended the State Department’s Fifth Annual Generation Prague Conference. The conference was started four years ago as a way to highlight the important perspectives and contributions of the next generation, my generation, as we work to implement the vision President Obama set forward in his 2009 speech in Prague—a world without nuclear weapons.

Don’t Let Nuclear-Security Cooperation with Russia Lapse

This week, The National Interest published an op-ed by Lt. General (USA, Ret.) Robert Gard and Nickolas Roth on U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation. The authors argue that despite recent tensions between the two countries, it is in the United States’ interests to continue working with Russia to reduce the likelihood that nuclear material would be stolen and used by terrorists.

Assuring Our Allies? What a Pentagon Bomber Mission Says about Tactical Nukes in Europe.

In early June, the U.S. Air Force announced the deployment to Europe of three B-52 and two B-2 bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons to partake in military exercises with allies in the region. During the deployment, which will span approximately two weeks, the bombers will conduct training flights in the U.S. European Command area of operations.