On the 7th (local time), Hamas, the armed political faction that rules the Gaza Strip in Palestine, launched a major offensive against Israel. Many rockets fired by Hamas penetrated Israel’s low-altitude air defense system ‘Iron Dome’ and fell on Israel. Iron Dome is a weapon system that intercepts short-range rockets and artillery shells within a range of 4 to 70 km (interception altitude of 10 km).
During the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Ministry of Defense released a fireworks-like interception video showing Iron Dome hitting a rocket fired by Hamas. Israel has claimed that it has intercepted more than 90% of Palestinian rockets in armed conflicts in the Gaza Strip several times since the deployment of Iron Dome in 2011. Based on these claims, the myth of the ‘Invincible Iron Dome’ was established.
As public anxiety over North Korea’s long-range artillery is high in Korea, some have argued that an Israeli Iron Dome that has been proven in actual combat is needed. In fact, military authorities considered introducing Iron Dome after the Yeonpyeong Island bombardment in November 2010. However, it was judged unsuitable because it ‘does not fit the terrain and battlefield environment of the Korean Peninsula.’ This was because the poor armed force of Hamas, an armed group, was incomparably different from the ability of the regular North Korean army to fire large quantities of rockets.
In the May 2021 armed conflict, Hamas reportedly fired 4,300 rockets over 10 days. If you take the arithmetic average, the number of rockets fired by Hamas is 430 per day, or 18 per hour. North Korean long-range artillery is known to be capable of firing 16,000 rounds per hour. Comparing the launch volume per hour (target of interception), if Hamas rockets are a drizzle, North Korea’s long-range artillery is a torrential rain.
Iron Dome’s ability to defend against North Korean long-range artillery shells, which will be focused on targeting the metropolitan area, is woefully inadequate. It is said that one Iron Dome battery can intercept about 30 rockets. It costs over 60 billion won to pack one bag. It is said that South Korea needs so many Iron Domes to prevent North Korean long-range artillery attacks that it will cost about 3 trillion won. For this reason, it was judged that it was ‘not suitable for the battlefield environment of the Korean Peninsula.’
Hamas had been firing rockets intermittently, but this time it fired rockets먹튀검증 all at once. On the 7th, Commander Mohammad Deif, who leads the Hamas military organization, claimed in a statement that “more than 5,000 rockets were fired in the first 20 minutes of shooting.” Converted into one hour, it is more than 15,000 rounds. Massive rockets rained down on Israel like a salvo from North Korea’s long-range artillery, exceeding the response capabilities of Israel’s 13 Iron Dome batteries inside and outside the country. The Iron Dome system would have been overloaded, causing the radar and fire control system to not function properly, and the prepared interceptor missiles would have quickly run out. This time, it is not that there was a hole in the impenetrable Israeli Iron Dome, but that the Iron Dome itself was not impregnable in the first place. The Ministry of National Defense announced the ‘Korean Iron Dome’
in 2020.decided to develop a North Korean long-range artillery interception system called . In July of last year, the Yoon Seok-yeol government announced that it would push up the electrification period for this system from 2030 to 2026. In Korea, when the Korean-style Iron Dome is completed, it is hoped that the entire metropolitan area will be safe from the threat of North Korea’s long-range artillery, but the reality is that even if the Korean-type Iron Dome is introduced, North Korea’s rocket attacks cannot be 100% prevented.
It is absolutely disadvantageous for South Korea to strengthen its defense capabilities in a way that catches up with North Korea’s missile and long-range artillery threats. Even if South Korea spends a lot of money to build a missile defense network and long-range artillery interception network, North Korea can respond at a much lower cost by expanding the quantity of missiles and long-range artillery, mounting multiple warheads and mock warheads, and firing a mixture of missiles and multiple rocket launchers. .
The biggest problem in South Korea’s ability to intercept North Korean missiles and long-range artillery is that it is not cost-effective. Like the current Israel-Hamas conflict, the attacking side can launch cheap rockets in large quantities in a short period of time, quickly depleting the defending side’s expensive interceptor missiles. One interceptor missile used against Israel’s Iron Dome costs about 80 million won, but one Hamas rocket costs about 800,000 won, which is 1/100th of that.
In this Israel-Hamas conflict, it was revealed that interception is difficult when large quantities of rockets are launched in a short period of time. At this time, government authorities need to inform that the North Korean long-range artillery interception system being developed is not a project to thoroughly defend the entire metropolitan area, but to select and focus on protecting key core facilities such as the President’s Office, the ROK Armed Forces command center, airfields, and ports.