In the last ten years thousands of rockets have been launched at Israel from Gaza. In the four days leading up to yesterday 846 rockets were fired into the country out of which 302 were intercepted by the Iron Dome antimissile system. The system is able to calibrate which incoming missiles pose a threat to populated areas and which will fall where they're unlikely to cause harm. The system then launches an interceptor missile at the dangerous rockets and ignores the others. Israeli officials say that 90 percent of the attempted interceptions have worked, thus providing life-saving protection for population centers like Tel Aviv.
Those of a certain age might remember the ridicule President Reagan took for advocating an antimissile system to protect us against Soviet ICBMs. Scoffers derided the idea that such a system would ever work, they mockingly labelled it Reagan's "Star Wars" program, but Reagan was convinced it was a way to protect human life that we could ill-afford not to develop. He was confident that the nay-sayers would be proven wrong and they were. Today "Star Wars" is a term of approbation and its understandably hard to get those who lampooned the idea in the 1980s to admit to their poor judgment.
Anyway, the Israelis are certainly glad Reagan went ahead with the R&D because the technology developed to intercept ICBMs is today being used to save lives throughout the tiny nation of Israel.
