The 20-ft Fajr-5 rocket leaves its launcher in Gaza in a hurry, gaining speed as it streaks east. Its warhead is carrying 200 pounds of high explosives toward the Israeli capital, 50 miles away, at a speed of Mach 2.8.

This attack, on Nov. 17, 2012, should have been unexpected. Hamas debuted its new Fajr rocket artillery—a Chinese weapon copied by the Iranians, who admit to passing the tech to Hamas—just the day before. But upon seeing the Fajr, Israel rushed its controversial defensive system, Iron Dome, into the region to intercept the new threat. Within 24 hours, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced that Iron Dome had knocked two Fajr-5s out of the sky.

Here's how it works. A mobile radar unit detects an inbound rocket and processes information to identify its type. Within seconds, the battle management and control (BMC) vehicle has converted the radar information into a trajectory and projected impact area. If the area is populated, an interceptor is fired. The interceptor missile receives trajectory updates from the BMC as it streaks toward its target, but relies on its own radar to close on the inbound missile. When the missile gets close, its small warhead explodes and showers the target in shrapnel, destroying it.

Iron Dome remains a major part of Israel's defense strategy, including during this most recent flare-up in Gaza. Experts still hotly disagree about the capability of the Iron Dome missile defense system, and its ability to use such a small warhead to destroy inbound rockets. But that first 2012 face-off between the incoming missiles and the interceptors highlighted the real strength of Iron Dome—its brains, not its brawn. Iron Dome proved its worth by automatically identifying a never-before-seen missile in real-time battle.

Missile vs. Missile

Shooting missiles to hit missiles is nothing new. It's a hard engineering challenge, but modern militaries have made big strides by linking the data of powerful radar on the ground to guidance systems on the interceptors. But the brains of Iron Dome are unique, and that why it's changing the way the world thinks about missile defense.

When it detects a rocket, Iron Dome immediately calculates that rocket's trajectory. If the target were a major city or military base, IDF personnel could decide to fire an interceptor; if the warhead were going to end up in the empty desert or into the sea, they let it go. That's partly a matter of practicality, but it's also a matter of money. Missile war is a war of attrition. How many warheads can sneak through defenses depends on the number of interceptors available, and that is essentially a budgeting question. The more interceptors cost, the fewer of them there will be. So firing only at valid targets makes the entire system more effective.

The Changing Logic of Missile Defense

This year Iron Dome is being put to the test. In the first three days of the 2014 Israeli offensive against militants in Gaza, Hamas fired more than 300 rockets (some Fajr-5s, but mostly other shorter-range rockets) into Israeli territory. While we're still waiting for independent data, Israel claims 90 percent of the intercepts have been successful. If these numbers bear out (the Pentagon has tallied earlier success rates at 80 percent), then the system is holding up well.

Israel's success could lead other countries to change the way they think about missile defense. "The Western doctrine of firing two interceptors for every one incoming missile will surely be scrutinized because interceptors have become more accurate, in many cases negating the need to fire a 'backup,'" USAF Lt. Col. Eddie Boxx, a visiting military fellow at The Washington Institute, wrote in July.

Even without interceptors, early warning systems with the smarts to know where a warhead will land could revolutionize military and civil defense. In Israel, warning sirens wail and Israeli radio and TV stations interrupt their broadcasts. Those with the Red Alert app, which reportedly gets its data directly from the IDF, receive an alert. Interrupting the lives of a population saps morale and hurts an economy, but using data to panic as few people as necessary is a tactic to beat the missile's strategic intent.

The missile war between Hamas and Israel has become an arms race—a cat-and-mouse game of attack and defense. And there appears to be no end in sight. Last year, Iran announced it was producing a two-stage Fajr-5, which can fling warheads twice as far and at higher speeds. Somewhere, you can be sure an Iron Dome software engineer is crunching those radar algorithm numbers and waiting for this new missile to appear in Gaza.

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