The US Army has purchased two Iron Dome defense systems, Defense News reports.
The missile defense systems are short-range counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) weapons systems that have been repeatedly tested by Hamas rockets fired into Israeli territory. The system’s radar detects incoming projectiles and tracking them until they get in range for one of the Iron Dome’s Tamir missiles to strike.
The batteries will be part of the Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability program, which aims to defend against enemy missiles, rockets, drones, and artillery.
The system only targets rockets predicted to land in the protected zone, allowing ones that miss to pass by.
Iron Dome can operate in all weather conditions and at any time; one launcher holds 20 intercept missiles at a given time. The system uses a radar to detect an incoming projectile. The radar tracks the projectile while also alerting the other system components — the battle management and weapons control (BMC) component and the launcher — of the incoming threat. It also estimates where incoming projectiles will hit and only focuses on those threats that will fall in the area the system is meant to protect.
Israel has said the system intercepted 85 percent of the rockets fired in a 2012 Gaza operation.
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