Ten years after the first successful defense system trial, Walla director of research, weapons development and technological infrastructure, completed an upgraded trial • To date, the system has conducted 2,400 successful operational interceptions • "Today, the State of Israel can be said to be more protected"
Decade for the first successful interception of the Iron Dome system // Photo: Mafaat Wall Manager, Ministry of Defense
Upgraded Dome: Defense Department Director of Walla (Director of Research, Development of Arms and Technological Infrastructure) successfully completes a series of Iron Dome interception experiments on Sunday, 10 years after the system's first trial in January 2010.
In the series of experiments, conducted from an experimental field in the south of the country, the system's capabilities, in a new and advanced development version, were examined in a number of scenarios, which simulate future threats, which the system may face during a confrontation.
"Allow the Air Force to deal with the expected threats in the arena." Iron Dome Experiment // Photo courtesy of MFA
After the experiment, the Walla director of the Defense Ministry's MoFA, Moshe Fattal, said: "The successful series of experiments that we completed in the Iron Dome system were performed exactly 10 years after the first interception experiment in the system. Over the past decade, we have performed dozens of interceptions in experiments and over two thousand operational intercepts.
"The system tested in the current series of experiments is an upgraded and improved system compared to the operational system today. When we give it to the IDF, it will allow the Air Force to deal much better with the projected threats in the arena."
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The system intercepted all threats // Photo courtesy of MFA
To date, the Iron Dome system, which became operational at the end of March 2011, has performed more than 2,400 successful operational interceptions, and is considered one of the strata of Israel's multi-layered defense system along with the 'Magic Wand' and 'Arrow 2 and Arrow 3' systems.
Senior Vice President and Head of the Air Defense Division at Raphael, Finney Jungman, also referred to the experiments and said that thanks to the upgrade, Israel will be safer. "We ended the series with 100 percent success trials. The system intercepted all threats, which were sent to the areas they protected during the experiment. Today we can say that the State of Israel is more protected, beyond what the Iron Dome system could provide before the series of experiments we have just completed, "he said.