The Iron Dome missile defense system has achieved a nearly 90% success rate (opens in new tab)

The Iron Dome is a really amazing system, I was volunteering in the Israeli Army last year and this system was one you really had the feeling is changing the life for the better for people living in the affected areas. Even if they were not standing behind Israel politically they were still very grateful that this system is in place. The problem I see is that it's very expensive to run (I remember something about 50k/rocket, could be wrong though) while the rockets they are shooting down are very cheap to manufacture. They also send a minimum of 2 rockets for every incoming rocket to be on the safe side if I remember correctly.

Some more information:

http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2013/09/20/clear-skies-ahead-mee...

>[Iron Dome] has been activated to intercept about 27 percent of the approximately 180 rockets fired between Monday night and midday Wednesday.

Measure what you manage. The system's success rate for attempted targets is a valid measure. But it is also a dangerous one on which to solely rely. A devious commander, seeking only to maximize this metric, would limit Iron Dome interceptions to only those strikes which he is supremely confident it can successfully intercept.

May I suggest a complimentary statistic of people injured, and property damaged, per missile fired from Palestinian territory regardless of whether Iron Dome engages or not. This measures, in the long run, both (a) how effective Iron Dome is when it engages and (b) how good Iron Dome is at deciding whether or not to engage. B is missing today. I think it is a crucial component to manage.

I live in Cairo. I cannot help but to compare that this is the third day of the Israel strikes on Gaza and so far 70 people have been killed. This is how many people that we lost in Egypt last year on a single 'mildy bad' chaotic day.

Living in the Middle East makes you numb to this common killings.

Interesting, the BBC reports different stats:

"The military said its Iron Dome missile defence system had intercepted 21 of the 82 rockets fired on Wednesday, including three above Tel Aviv, three over Ashkelon and three over Ashdod."

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28240137

An MIT professor on NPR radio earlier this evening reported that the Iron Dome missile defense systems has achieved a less than 5% success rate. Him or the article must be wrong, but who?

The problem is that if it's such a wild success, it may lead to other forms of attacks e.g. suicide bombers which were more effective might become trendy again.

"A senior Israel Defense Forces officer said Wednesday that the number of rockets to hit Israel can be expected to rise."

In other words, Israel is not planning to de-escalate their illegal occupation - in fact it sounds likely they're planning to invade the gaza strip, which they have been bombing quite actively in recent days and hours.

So all you need is 10 missiles to win against the statistics?