"Iron Dome" faces growing RAM threat (Photo: MoFE, Israel)

09:37 GMT, July 7, 2008 Israel has succesfully tested its high priority “Iron Dome” anti-missile defence system at a secret test ground in the south of the country last week. The system is being designed by Israel’s weapons development authority Rafael to counter short-range rockets such as Kassams and Katyushas, which became an increasing threat to civilians living next to terrorist-controlled areas.

The tests involved Rafael’s new “Tamir” missile which is expected to be functional against real Kassams and Katyushas by the end of this year. Israelian defence technology firm Elta - a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) - develops a new radar which will be capable to identify, locate and track incoming missiles and guide the “Tamir” to its target.

Defence experts recently warned that the US$ 300 million (€ 191 million) “Iron Dome” may not react fast enough to intercept all incoming rockets and added that the costs of each interception will amount to tens of thousands of dollars per rocket.

However, in order to minimise the costs of intercepting thousands of incoming missiles each year "Iron Dome" will decide which threat “is worth” to be intercepted. The system’s radars quickly calculates the trajectory of the incoming rocket and will not respond if the trajectory indicates that it will hit e. g. an uninhabited area. More than 90 per cent of these missiles don’t hit their targets and land in uninhabited areas.

“Iron Dome” will use a small kinetic interceptor to stop incoming missiles. Israel plans to deploy it along its northern border to Lebanon as well as around Gaza. The system which had to be updated since former defence minister Amir Peretz ordered it early in 2007, will have to be capable of hitting incoming missiles that are fired at a range of 4.5 kilometers (2.5 miles) from their target.

Analysts doubt that “Iron Dome” will be mission ready in 2010. The system is of the highest priority for the Israelian Ministry of Defence. "We are doing our best so that the system will be operational by 2010 and all the checking we are doing now is going very well," Shlomo Dror a spokesman for the Israelian Ministry of Defence told the ‘Telegraph’.