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NRI Latest News: Israel’s more advanced “Iron Beam” laser defense system will soon be operational in a year, significantly enhancing the capabilities of the country’s defenses, according to a CNN report citing the Israel Ministry of Defense.
As an effort to expedite production, Israel has just allotted over USD 500 million in contracts to its domestic defense companies, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Elbit Systems.
Developed alongside Iron Dome, the Iron Beam seeks to neutralize all the aerial threats: missiles, drones, rockets, and mortars. The threat of the missile and drone attacks mounted by Iran and its surrogates has increased considerably, and thus, in modern warfare, it seems to be a timely development for Israel.
Eyal Zamir, director general of the Israeli defense ministry, said this was the first step into a “new era in warfare” and would be fully operational within a year.
About Iron Beam
The prototype of the laser-based “Iron Beam” defense system was first seen in 2021, which is under development ever since. The system is introduced when Israel is engaged in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon as a response to recent missile exchanges with Iran. According to military analysts, the Iron Beam could significantly improve Israel’s defense capabilities, especially against a variety of aerial threats, while at the same time potentially reducing operational costs compared to traditional missile defense systems.
From now on, this is exactly what the Iron Beam presents: using laser technology as a way of neutralization of threats from missiles and drones to mortars can be seen as a complimentary piece of the overall defense set-up of Israel, thus the Iron Dome.
The Iron Beam in detail-
Based-on laser technology defense system uses a ground-based highpower laser system for targeting from hundreds of meters to up to several kilometers of vulnerable spots of projectiles in engines and warheads causing them failures.
Unlike the missile defense system existing in Israel, this laser-based system will directly attack the threats using focused laser beams instead of radar detection and interceptor missiles.
Cost and performance: The laser-based defense will be cost-effective as well as faster than the Iron Dome since the interceptions by laser beams come with “almost zero cost per interception.”
Iron Dome cost: It uses two missiles in order to intercept one by the Iron Dome, which cost around USD 50,000.
Drone problem: The Iron Dome also faces a problem with the drones due to their size being small, weight, and radar cross-section that is minimal, and flight paths that can be altered.
The frequent interceptions needed: A war with Israel’s northern neighbor has led to quite a number of interceptions between missile and rockets. For one day, the IDF said that about 50 projectiles had entered Israeli territory from southern Lebanon, with partial successes in interception.
Benefits for the laser system: This laser system is effective because drones are hard for Iron Dome to intercept.
It means that the laser system might be limited by cloudiness, rain, or even haze in terms of weather conditions since it weakens the atmospheric penetration of such a system and makes acquiring targets harder. A lot of power resource supply is also needed to work.
However, the Iranian stance on indigenous laser defense remains unclear. According to reports from Iranian state media in 2022, the country has apparently developed an ability to “manufacture laser weapons to defend sensitive regions.” More reports claim that Iran has apparently obtained the Chinese-developed “Silent Hunter” laser weapon. However, experts report that this is apparently less powerful than the soon-to-be-released Israeli Iron Beam system with its advanced targeting and interceptor capabilities.
