COMO ISRAEL SE DEFENDE? O que é o Iron Dome?

Shalom! And welcome back to Israel with Aline, and welcome back to my home here in Jerusalem! In the last ten days, Ha-mas
and Islamic Ji-had, which are terror1st groups from Gaza, have launched more than three and a half thousand rockets against the civilian population of Israel, but few missiles have actually landed on Israeli soil. And this, thanks to the system called the Iron Dome and are going to talk about it today. So if you’re ready, let’s get started! The “Domo de Ferro” in portuguese, Iron Dome in english and in Hebrew is called Kipat Barzel, it is the most modern anti-missile system in the world. When a rocket is launched against Israel, this system calculates in seconds where it will land. And if it goes to an area where there is a population, the system automatically sends the anti-missile, and destroys the rocket still in the air. But why does Israel create such a system? In the nineties, Hez-bollah, a terrorist group from Lebanon starts to launch rockets against Israel, and also in the year 2000, the terror1st group Ha-mas starts to launch rockets as well, from Gaza. Only from the Gaza Strip between the years 2000 and 2008, eight thousand projectiles were launched. Of those, four thousand were mortars, and four thousand rockets. And in 2006, during the second Lebanon war, Hiz-bollah launched four thousand rockets causing 44 deaths, 250,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes, and more than 1 million had to take refuge in shelters, the shelters that we saw here on the channel, in the last video. And then, General Daniel Gold literally seeing this rain of rocket over Israel, he understands that we need a solution. And the solution he proposes is an anti-missile system that will intercept the missiles still in the air, a revolutionary idea at that time, and the generals of Israel, and also American generals hear this idea and say: this is impossible, this is not something that can be done in practice, and we will not invest money in this project. Why not? Because it’s a waste of time and money, to invest in a project that is doomed to failure, but Daniel does get supporters for his project; among them the Israeli Defense Minister: Amir Peretz. So they do start the project, in partnership with a company called Rafael and also the Israeli aerospace industry, and they start the project and in 2008 they start testing and finally in 2011 the system is put in use, and it revolutionizes the defense system of the State of Israel. But how does this system work in practice? When a rocket is launched against Israel, this system, the Iron Dome it calculates in a matter of seconds where it will fall, and then they determine what to do There are two options: if the missile goes towards an open area, open field or the sea, it is allowed to fall in that open area, and we’ll talk in a little bit about why and if the missile is going towards a populated area, for example a city, Israel will launch an anti-missile that is called Tamir, and it will catch that missile in the air and blow it up before it reaches the populated area, and then prevent the missile from hitting the civilian population. And in 2011, when this system was inaugurated, who was called, or the people who were called to use it for the first time, they were young soldiers from the city of Sderot, the city of Sderot is one of the closest cities to Gaza, and one of the cities that has suffered most from this rocket rain for years and years, they are young people who have had a good part of their childhood shaped by a rain of rockets and that’s why it was so special to call these same young people now to inaugurate this system. And now let’s talk about the good and also the bad things about the Iron Dome system, the best of all folks, is its efficiency, it is estimated to have an efficiency of ninety percent. What does this mean? Ninety percent of missiles that are supposed to fall in populated areas, are intercepted. And when we talk about numbers as expressive as 3500 rockets in a matter of ten days, It means that hundreds, if not thousands, of lives are saved because of this Iron Dome system. Other advantages of this system is that it is a mobile system, so for example, at the moment Israel is being attacked from Gaza mainly, you can move most batteries to the area near Gaza, but if, for example, in the future a conflict happens coming from Hez-bollah from Northern Israel, they can take those same batteries and move them in that direction, also and since the system works with radars, it works in any weather, rain or shine day. The Iron Dome is ninety percent efficient. And it was created to intercept short-range missiles we are talking about between 4 and 70 kilometers, but in future improvement projects in this system they want it to reach up to 250 kilometers of rocket range. But then what are the problems of the Iron Dome? The first and the main one is actually the cost. Each battery, to be built each battery, this is what we are seeing now on the screen, it costs 50 million dollars to produce it. 50 million dollars per battery, and in addition each of the Tamir rockets that are inside that battery, each of them costs 40 thousand dollars. Israel currently has 10 batteries in operation, and Israel wants to build five more batteries, and the cost issue is a very serious problem. We saw the cost of creating the batteries and also of the Tamir missiles that are used, we calculate that today, within Lebanon, the Hez-bollah has around a hundred thousand missiles, which are dedicated in the fight against Israel. And there in the Gaza Strip, until the beginning of this last round of conflict, they had about 14,000 missiles. of that, more than 3,500 were launched against Israel and a little over a thousand were destroyed by Israel on Gaza soil, but we are talking about a few thousand missiles that Gaza still has. And each missile launched has a cost of 40,000 dollars to be intercepted And that is why they decide to let the missiles fall in open areas, which is what we talked before, because now if there is a missile going towards the Mediterranean Sea, or towards an agricultural area it is more worthwhile to let that missile fall rather than intercept it in the air, and the last problem that we are feeling here in Israel now, in this latest round of missiles coming from Gaza, is that the system has a limit since we only have 10 batteries, there is a limit on how many missiles can be intercepted at the same time, and Ha-mas and Islamic Ji-Had are sometimes launching 300 missiles in a matter of 10 minutes, to overload the system, so we did see some rockets falling over the last few days on Israeli residential areas, and unfortunately we also had 12 people killed because of these rockets. And what is the future of Israel’s defense system? It’s called Iron Beam, in portuguese “o Feixe de Ferro” because we saw that the Iron Dome is a fantastic system but it also has some problems, the first one is the cost and the second one is that it has a range of seven kilometers and we see that there are populations that live less than seven kilometers from Gaza, and that they are not protected in the same way by the Iron Dome and that is why Israel created we could say the younger brother of the Iron Dome, the Iron Beam that wich is a solid state laser what does that mean? If these super short-range missiles are launched against Israel, Israel will launch against a beam, literally a laser and this laser, it will cut the outside of the rocket and so it will explode in the air and not fall into these communities. So we can see that the defense of Israel has to improve and evolve all the time. And this new system is not going to replace the Iron Dome, but join it, and it is an even faster system. Between the moment the rocket is launched and the laser destroys it, it takes between 4 and 5 seconds. And the its cost is going to be one dollar per laser emitted, obviously it has all the costs of production and development, But it will also be a more affordable way to destroy part of the missiles launched against Israel. I want to end today’s video with a prayer request for peace, for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But while this doesn’t happen, it’s great to see the investment that Israel makes, and the effort that Israel makes to protect its population, being Jewish, Christian, Muslim, all groups are protected, the Iron Dome works to protect Arab cities in Israel as well also Jewish cities and also Christian locations. So let’s hope for a day that this is no longer necessary, but while we see that it is extremely necessary, we are grateful for all the protection that we can have here, a big hug, and if you want more videos here straight from Israel, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, a kiss and see you next time!