Official claims of Israel’s super-short-range Iron Dome system boasting an 80%+ accuracy level remain in serious doubt, but its reliability in securing gaudy pledges of American aid seems unrivalled.

The Pentagon has announced that it intends to spend $400 million funding the Iron Dome system for Israel in the next two fiscal years, a dramatic increase from the $70 million given to them in 2012, though less than the $680 million from 2013.

Since its foundation the Iron Dome system has been virtually exclusively US-funded, with the Israeli military ruling the thing too expensive to bother with and cancelling it outright, only to see the US Congress step up and fully find it for them.

Since then, every time a handful of rockets hit Israel, officials make much of having shot down large numbers with the system, though experts say these figures are almost certainly a dramatic overstatement intended for PR gain rather than as an accurate expression of the devices’ limited utility.

The Iron Dome is just a fraction of the $3 billion-plus in annual US military aid to Israel, and the Pentagon’s funding request for it usually ends up being only part of what Congress ultimately sends for Iron Dome, with officials liking to announce new rounds of funding for it at more or less regular intervals.
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/04/17/u...for-iron-dome/