Exclusive: Israel is running critically low on interceptors, US officials say
www.semafor.com
As Iran tests missile defense capabilities with a constant barrage, interceptor stockpiles are a pivotal variable in the war. An Israeli official denies the shortage.
  • Notyou@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    Forgive me if I’m wrong but isn’t part of the Christian Nationalists crazy view about armagedon is that Israel gets blown up? I think that is part of the plan.

  • grumpusbumpus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    8 hours ago

    Israel is also an aggressive, dishonest, genocidal ethnostate, supplied by the most overgrown military apparatus in human history.

    Citizens in Israel and the U.S. have an obligation to change our governments and societies for the sake of the entire world. Until then, pearl-clutching over justified blowback deserves no sympathy.

  • kreskin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    24 hours ago

    Americans are running low on jobs, food, money, health care, education, legal due process, civil rights, and now self respect. A lot of which is due to zionists effing everything up. I hope they have zero interceptors and have to pursue peace instead.

    • MartianRecon@lemmus.orgEnglish
      32·
      23 hours ago

      The amount of money that we have wasted at the behest of Israel is staggering. Trillions of dollars. Every single dollar stolen from our people, to advance the interests of an ‘ally’ who has literally attacked our soldiers.

      • Absurdly Stupid @lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        21 hours ago

        It’s not wasted, it’s USAs forward military base, and an invaluable attraction for religious fanatics.

        We knew very well that the countries defined by the super powers after WWII would always be in conflict. They were designed that way purposefully, tribes were split apart and mortal enemies were mixed together very carefully to boost conflict.

        Like the post office, this government service is costly. BUT it’s only costly for the taxpayers, you see, it’s fantastic business for the military industrial complex and their investors. Guess who provides loans to those same businesses?

        It is a mystery, back to work

  • TwilitSky@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    22 hours ago

    This seems like the thing you check before you attack a world power so you can bully your neighbors and steal their homes, but what do I know?

  • perestroika@slrpnk.netEnglish
    30·
    1 day ago

    I plead for journalists to actually inform themselves about the subject before they write… :o

    Israel has other ways to defend against Iranian missiles during the war, including via fighter jets, but the interceptors are among the most effective defensive weapons against long-range fire. Its Iron Dome missile defense system is designed to repel more short-range fire.

    They speak of Iron Dome (short range, for slow rockets from inside the atmosphere) and THAAD (high altitude, for fast missiles re-entering from space) interchangeably. And they even mention fighter aircraft, which cannot do jack in either case.

    The currently relevant scenarios:

    • Hezbollah shoots unguided rockets at Israel -> Iron Dome intercepts maybe 15% of them (if the trajectory looks dangerous enough), and this costs about 10 times as much as the whole rocket salvo.

    • Iran shoots an IRBM at Israel -> the IRBM splits up in space into cluster munitions -> Israel can intercept the MIRV bus (cluster munition housing), but it’s empty at the time of getting intercepted. Not much point. And doing it would cost at least 10 times as much as the incoming missile did.

    A missile defense system, in this case, cannot do jack either. For this type of attack, defense would have a point if one was expecting to get nuked, becuause a nuclear-armed reentry vehicle cannot be made arbitrarily small, and the cost of leaving it un-intercepted would be extremely tragic.

    In case of these projectiles, which are conventional and unguided in their final stage, one has to simply absorb the hits. This is the cost of war. And try to find the other guy’s launchers, and try to prevent them from producing more.

    And I’m not shedding any tears for Israel in this case. It definitely sucks to be bombed with cluster munitions, but they started this round of fighting, killed most people who they might have negotiated with, and aren’t even new to using forbidden kinds of weapons (e.g. cluster munitions made of white phosphorus).