GAZA GAFFE POKES HOLE IN ISRAEL'S IRON DOME

HUNDREDS of Hamas fighters swept across the Gaza border on motorcycles, paragliders and SUVS, even as Hamas launched a blitz with more than 7,000 missiles. This is a border embedded with micro-surveillance devices: finely-calibrated subterranean digital sensors of high sensitivity to monitor Hamas' movements through tunnels; the border terrain under the charge of the well-equipped Israeli Ground Forces; and the air protected by the celebrated Iron Dome system, which has formed an antimissile carapace over Israel for twelve years now.

- KAJAL BASU

But all this came to nought. The Dome didn't work. The Gaza barrier was infiltrated. Intelligence and surveillance failed. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were caught by surprise. Israel's much-vaunted security and microsurveillance creds are in the dust. Israel is no longer the most securitised country in the world. That boast is toast.

Most gallingly, it happened in the full public glare that's so detested by the shadowy Shin Bet (internal security service), Mossad (foreign intelligence service) and Aman (military intelligence)-the capabilities of all of which collapsed in unison.

The long ripples of this failure will be as international as domestic. The indications are that many countries contemplating investing in various versions of Israeli missile interceptor systems including Germany, the Czech Republic, Finland, and the US are doing a rethink about installing any component of the Dome system.

The Iron Dome's inadequacy will also hit the US, which has so far spent upwards of $1.5 billion on the programme and related research, and manufactures roughly 75 percent of the Tamir missile interceptor's components. In August 2020, Israeli Rafael and American Raytheon formed a joint venture to produce Dome interceptors in the US. In 2021, the US bought two Dome systems from Rafael, one of which was operationalised in 2022. Already, there is opposition from within the senior US military establishment, with arguments that the Dome cannot be integrated into the US Army's "future air defense brain", the integrated air and missile defence battle command system.