Thursday, August 2, 2012

Israel's defense strategy: in the hands of Rafael or the hand of God?

It's been a busy week for the War Party on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mitt Romney kicked things off with a Holy Land tour intended to burnish his bona fides on the Iran file.  That was followed up by a visit from Leon Panetta designed to assure the hosts that the Obama admin could be counted on to be every bit as hawkish as the Republicans claim to be.

In the wake of all that war talk the Ministry of Defense released its latest calculations for how many Israeli civilians are likely to lose their lives in a war with Iran.

Two hundred.

Contrast that with the claims of military intel boss Kochavi last February that at any given moment there are at least 200,000 hostile missiles  aimed at Israel. According to the math, of every thousand missiles fired at Israel in the event of hostilities, one will cause a civilian death.

Obviously they must be putting far more faith in Iron Dome than one would consider prudent. According to the latest musings on the matter from Aviation Week and Defense Update there are now six operatioional Iron Dome batteries in place.

Each battery  has three launchers of twenty interceptors each, for a total of 360 anti-missile missiles.

So it looks like Rafael has you covered for about the first five minutes of the upcoming war.

After that it appears the Defense Ministry is counting on miracles.

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