At the end of March 2011, a miraculous air defense system Iron Dome was initially deployed in BeerSheba, Israel. A few days afterwards, it was reported that the system successfully intercepted rocket bombs from Gaza under control of IDF.
Suffering from attacks of Qassam, Israel had been looking for an effective way to defend against the threat that would occur anytime. The Lebanon militiamen fired rocket bombs or mortars to Israeli populated areas from random cites during previous conflicts, which badly influenced lives of a large number of Israeli civilians. But U.S., the ally of Israel, believed that it was hard to intercept those targets effectively after evaluation. Israel had to develop its own defense method independently.
Approved in 2004, tested in 2007 and took service in 2011, the development progress of Iron Dome was remarkably fast. Different from common defense systems like interceptor aircraft or helicopters, the system developed by Israel is mainly designed to intercept rather small-sized targets like rockets, artillery bombs, guided missiles and whose trajectories are hard to calculate. The system is highly automated to command multi-launchers to intercept over 20 incoming targets simultaneously without any pre-warning time. Each launcher, consisting of 20 interceptors, can be deployed separately and controlled by the terminal remotely and synchronously to protect a larger area. The cost of $ 50,000 per interceptor is affordable for the use in large scale too.
The system have intercepted hundreds of rocket or artillery barrages fired to populated areas ever since its service. In May 2021, when the intense conflicts between Lebanon and Israel came to its peak, there were over 4000 rockets fired from Hamas within 10 days, 90% of which were intercepted by Iron Dome. Then the images of the interceptors with exhaust flames tailing were published on headlines of media at once. The system has became a brand-new star weapon.