What is Israel’s Iron Dome: The antimissile shield key to its defences

As shocking images emerge of rockets being fired at Israel, the country has deployed an incredible new way of stopping them in their tracks.

Rockets launched towards Israel from the northern Gaza Strip and the response from the Israeli missile defence system known as the Iron Dome leave streaks through the sky. Picture: Fatima Shbair/Getty Images

Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome missile defence system is intercepting a barrage of rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian militants from Gaza as bloody clashes escalate.

According to the Jewish state’s army, 200 of the more than 480 rockets which have been fired since Monday have been shot out of the sky by the system.

They claim that around 150 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory exploded inside the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli-designed Iron Dome system is meant to protect populated areas and critical assets by neutralising short-range aerial threats.

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The Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system (L) intercepts rockets (R) fired by the Hamas movement towards southern Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip as seen in the sky above the Gaza Strip overnight. Picture: Anas Baba / AFP

The first battery was deployed in March 2011 near the southern city of Beersheva – 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Gaza Strip, and a favourite Hamas target – to combat Soviet-designed Grad rockets fired from the Palestinian territory.

Israel now has 10 such batteries.

The head of the Israel Missile Defense Organisation, Moshe Patel, said that up to January Iron Dome had intercepted over 2,400 projectiles during the past decade.

With each launch costing reportedly almost $50,000, he told the Times of Israel that it had “saved hundreds of lives”.

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Israel's Iron Dome aerial defence system is activated to intercept a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas movement, above the southern Israeli city of Ashdod. Picture: Emmanuel Dunand / AFP

Each battery has a radar detection and tracking system, a firing control system and three launchers for 20 interceptor missiles. Each has a range of between four and 70 kilometres (2.5 and 44 miles).

Iron Dome was developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, a state-owned arms company based in the northern city of Haifa.

But it is also partly funded by the United States, which committed $5 billion to its development costs in 2016.

It is one of the strategic pillars of the US-Israeli alliance which has been followed by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.

In August 2019 the US Army signed a contract to purchase two Iron Dome