Marines To Buy Iron Dome. Army, No.

Army System is Far More Expensive

The US Marines are getting ready to buy key parts of Israel's highly successful Iron Dome air defense system.  In contrast, the US Army has commissioned an Alabama company to build a short range intercept system using existing air to air missiles as the interceptor component.  Both the Marine's and the Army's system will use US radars, vehicles, and battle management systems.

The result of all this is the army will end up with a vastly more costly and less effective system than Iron Dome.  

Iron Dome uses its own-developed interceptor missile called Tamir.  The Tamir is a slim, 9 foot long (3m) ground launched missile with a range of 2.4 miles (4 km) to 43 miles (70 km).  It has a super sophisticated electro-optical sensor package and communicates with its own battle management system.  The exact price of a Tamir missile is known only in a range of between $20,000 to $100,000, with the Israeli press suggesting a per copy price of $45,000.

Tamir launch

The Army is taking an air to air missile and launching it from the ground.  That missile is the AIM-9X, an advanced model of the Sidewinder series used by US combat aircraft.  Raytheon and the Norwegian Air Force are already using the AIM-9X in an air defense system called NASAMS.  It claims a range of 18.6 miles.  Norway supplied two NASAMS to Ukraine.  On February 3rd the Russians say they destroyed one of them located at the settlement of Krasnoarmeysk in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

AIM-9X

NASAMS can also fire AMRAM-ER (AIM-120 ER) air to air missiles and European Iris-T missiles. AMRAM-ER missiles cost more than $1 million per copy. IRIS-T costs more than $430,000 per missile. Russia destroyed an IRIS-T system on August 1st.

The cost of an AIM-9X missile is around $400,000, or four to five times more expensive than the Tamir interceptor and with shorter range. 

The Army could have acquired NASAMS but instead  contracted with Dynetics in Alabama for a new system called Enduring Shield.  It is indeed curious that, once again, the US Army decided not to acquire NASAMS because it is a joint program between Raytheon in the United States (which produces the AIM-9X) and Kongsberg in Norway, which produces the other main components of the system.

NASAMS (Kongsberg photo)

Dynetics was chosen over Iron Dome and Raytheon, even though the entire system for the army would have been produced in the United States. Today 75% of the Tamir missile is manufactured in the United States.

The Army was always opposed to Iron Dome, even though its success rate against Hamas-fired missiles was outstanding, ranging between 90 and 95%.  No other modern air defense system can claim anything near this success rate.  Iron Dome uses sophisticated algorithms to track targets and avoids incoming missiles that are likely to land in open fields.

The Army complained that Iron Dome would not work against other kinds of threats, namely drones and cruise missiles.  However, in tests in Israel conducted jointly by the US Missile Defense Agency and its Israeli counterpart, and tests in the United State at White Sands, New Mexico, Iron Dome was able to knock out cruise missiles and drones.  

Whether AIM-9X, which is a system optimized against large enemy aircraft, can successfully knock out small, low signature cruise missiles and drones, is an open, unsettled question. AIM-9X was fired from an F-35 and did knock out a drone in a test, but other attempts to shoot down drones have been less successful. Attempts to use modern air defense system such as the Patriot also have repeatedly failed against drones.

The Army also complained, in briefings it gave on Capitol Hill, that it could not integrate Iron Dome into its own planned layered defense system.  The Army demanded the source code for Iron Dome, something Israel's government refused because of its own national security concerns.  In any case, you don't need source code to integrate radars, command centers, and missiles.  What you need is a set of protocols that allow you to link these components.  The Marines had no trouble whatsoever in achieving the integration of their battle management and radars with the Tamir interceptor and launching systems.

Modern air defenses today need to deal with unprecedented threats ranging from very small, but lethal drones, to cruise missiles, to long range missiles that can destroy ground targets.  The war in Ukraine has shown just how tough this environment is, particularly as both sides are using elaborate deception techniques and electronic jamming.  Unlike battlefields of the past, almost everything is exposed to surveillance drones and other overhead sensors.  In addition, the use of swarming attacks with mixed threats (e.g., missiles, cruise missiles, kamikaze drones) puts huge pressure on air defenses.  Increasingly, enemy attacks will come from autonomous systems that can evade defenses and electronic suppression.  Air defenses will need to be able to self-select the real threats from the decoys and carry out decision-making tasks without operator intervention.

Israel is one of the few countries with layered air defenses and increasing integration using artificial intelligence to go after incoming attack threats.  

It seems the Marines will be taking advantage of Israeli developments,  The Army will not.