Doron Gavish, creator of the Iron Dome: “Hundreds and hundreds of missiles have been intercepted, the damage could have been impressive”

The Iron Dome, also known by its English name “Iron Dome”, is the missile defense system responsible for saving thousands of lives on Israeli soil during the latest conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, which culminated last week with a ceasefire between the parties. Doron Gavish, one of its creators, said his first presentation of the sophisticated shield dates back to 2011.

“A little over a year before the first interception of a missile, we started this journey with the Dome organizing the force, the procedures, the doctrines, the way of fighting; train our people physically and mentally. Yes we build the concept, the right concept to fight», Says Gavish in an interview within the framework of the forum Innovation experience.

Gavish says that due to the complexity of the Israeli conflict, where the country is vulnerable to receiving missiles and projectiles from all sides, creating the Iron Dome was like thinking about the invention of the wheel.

“Inventing the wheel means making logical decisions about how the system will work, what the technological concept would be, how to develop it, then who we were to train, what to train, how we do it. . So there were a lot of things we had to tackle to invent the wheel and see if it worked, ”he says.

Gavish is amazed at how much defense systems technology has evolved over the years.How things changed after the first prototype that intercepted a hundred missiles.

“Today everything is much more connected, Defense, technology, the combination of the two, alerting civilians. So the doctrine is much more complete, complete, if you compare it with the past, ”he said. And he adds: “The fighters themselves have a lot more experience, unfortunately. There have been thousands of interceptions, thousands so far. Therefore, the soldiers are there, very experienced and trained, as well as the technology itself ”.

Gavish explains that one of the advantages of Israel is that, because it has enemies that always lurk, the military industry can test the weapons or defense systems it creates and thus correct and perfect them.

“There are three pillars: the Israeli Air Force, industry and the Defense Ministry, all working together all the time to bring our forces to where they are now in terms of technology. . And if we look back, one of the elements to consider that the operation is a success is the frequency of interception. And in this latest campaign, the interception rate was 90%, which means that if they fired a thousand missiles, 900 were intercepted in the air. And that was not the case in the past, they were much less“, dice.

Gavish acknowledges that there are many details he cannot say about the Iron Dome technology as it is classified information. However, he says there have been many challenges along the way. For example, how many missiles could they intercept at the same time.

“We already know that one of the other more interesting challenges has to do with the fact that one of the first questions we asked ourselves was: what is an interception, how is it defined? Because if we go back to 1991, during the Gulf War, unfortunately there were a lot of impacts on Israel, and at that time we were operating with a Patriot missile system, with the American force, and one of the questions we asked ourselves was This one, what is an interception? He said.

Gavish says that one of the biggest challenges was finding a way to prevent the intercepted missile from landing on another town or village, although some believed that if it did not land on the territory the projectile was heading towards. was led, the operation would be successful. However, for him and his team this was not an option, they saw it as a failure. The big goal was to find a way to destroy the warhead that was on the missile while it was in the air..

“So we had to work really hard to make that happen. We have cameras in place to make sure our system is telling us what we want to know, and thus check if we are achieving what we want. We went to the place of the fall, to make sure that what was on the ground was the warhead, and only then were we sure to say it was a success.. But at the beginning this was not possible, at the beginning we had to verify it in situ, manually. Another challenge was to define where the missile is fired so that it falls in open places and there is no harm to civilians. There were a lot of parameters that had to be set, and those were some, just a few of the technological challenges: where do I shoot it, where do I drop it, ”he explains.

Gavin says a lot of people didn’t believe the idea, they thought it wouldn’t work. They thought it was something crazy, out of the ordinary, like shooting a bullet and intercepting it with another in the air. It was just something that couldn’t happen. But the trust was there, and he and his team knew it was possible, that technology could succeed. There were also a lot of people who collaborated from the start but needed a helping hand from someone with power to be able to work with all the resources needed.

“The decision was political and all the credit goes to Amir Peretz, who was our Minister of Defense at the time.. There were a lot of people against the system, but it was he who lobbied for money to develop it. Now when there is a success everyone is part of it, but at the beginning it was not that easy, ”he says.

Doron Gavish

Born in November 1963, is a brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces reserve. Gavish was the commander of the country’s air defense system. Gavish enlisted in the IDF in July 1983 and did all of his military service in the Air Force. In 1990, he was sent to the United States as part of the first delegation to receive the Patriot system., after President Bush donated two batteries to Israel. At the start of the Gulf War, he returned to Israel and served at the Air Force Headquarters as an officer in the patrol and training of the Patriot system. He commanded an anti-aircraft missile unit, served as head of the Torah and Training Division at Air Force Headquarters, and commanded the officers’ department of the School of the Air Force.

During the Second Lebanon War, he was head of the Package Center from 2006 to 2008 and he was in charge of the Air Defense School. In August 2009, he was appointed commander of an air defense post which he held until October 2012. During his tenure, a restructuring was applied and an air defense objective applied to the traditional augmented by the Missile and rocket interceptor functions was appointed, alert detection and responsibility to cooperate with the United States on missile protection.

It was further established a new organizational structure of two mission wings for the matrix– An active defense wing and sky-to-earth defense that replaced previous legends that operated in space. The matrix absorbed the Iron Dome system, which was commissioned, and the first rockets fired from the Gaza Strip were intercepted.

The iron dome

The incredible protective shield, called Kipat Barzel in Hebrew, is an all-weather mobile air defense system, developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, with assistance from the United States. It is designed for intercept and destroy short-range rockets and fired artillery shells at distances between 4 and 70 kilometers, and whose trajectory would lead them to an area populated by Israel.

The Iron Dome was declared operational and was initially deployed on March 27, 2011 near the town of Beersheba, in the south of the country. On April 7, 2011, the system successfully intercepted a BM-21 Grad launched from Gaza for the first time. March 10, 2012 The Jerusalem Post reported that the system had knocked down 90% of rockets fired from Gaza that allegedly landed in populated areas. In late 2012, Israel said it hoped to increase the range of interceptions, from a maximum of 70 kilometers to 250 kilometers, and make it more versatile, so that it could intercept rockets from two directions simultaneously.

This defense capacity is found in the current conflict in which The Iron Dome tracked and destroyed over 90% of the projectiles.

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