It's quiet the power requirement. I wonder how long it has to focus on a drone to eliminate it. Like how long is this thing consuming 100kW?

In the war in June, Iran fired 500kg warhead ballistic missiles. These were the only lethal munition they used, killing a couple dozen civilians.

The Iron Beam is not relevant against ballistic missiles.

This is designed to save people.

This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.

On the last day of the year, I am taking a few minutes to linger on this. At face value, most would agree with this, myself included. But I think we can dive one layer deeper. There are different schools of thoughts whether mankind is inherently good or evil. Over the years, I have become pretty firm believer that every person has the innate capacity for both good and evil, and the outcome is determined by both character and circumstances. Solzhenitsyn famously wrote (quote by Gemini):

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil."

If you subscribe to this, then a weapons system can also be a force for good, if used by an entity for the purpose of "peace through strength". The strength keeps our innate capability for evil in check, as the consequences for evil would be guaranteed. A case in point is the MAD doctrine for nuclear weapons which has prevented a world war for the last 80 years.

I'd appreciate philosophical replies. Am I wrong, either in a detail or at the core of the argument? Are there additional layers? I would like to kindly ask to keep replies away from views on the specific players in this specific press release. We'd just be reiterating our positions without convincing anyone.

(edit: grammar, slight rewording)

Lets send some over to Ukraine.

Each Iron Dome interception cost many times more than the cost of the rockets. This will make it cheaper for other poorer nations to afford and operate.

Yeah, I see this as ultimately a wash.

In Russia/Ukraine, drones have proven to be a very real threat to deal with (arguably also in Iraq).

What this means is wealthy nations will snatch up or recreate this and deploy it. That will stop smaller resistance forces from either defending or attacking. Depending on the nation in question this could both good or bad. Just like drones, guns, or tanks.

Effectively, this puts the status quo back to where it was before mass drone deployments.

> It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones

One could also hope that e.g. Iran starts focusing its economy on the wellbeing of its people versus playing regional cop to America’s world police.

Three thoughts:

1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.

Let me pose this question to you: if these were purely defensive technologies, why don't we give them to everyone, including the Palestinians? and

2. Israel has already ruled out giving Ukraine the anti-missile (and assumedly anti-drone) defenses [1]; and

3. Many people, yourself included it seems, need to examine these conflicts around the world through the lens of historical materialism.

Take the genocide and conflict in Sudan. The SAF are arguably the ones with the "cheap rockets" here. Should we be giving the RSF anti-drone technology? The RSF are backed by the UAE using US weapons. Why? To loot Sudanese gold.

Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Territory, access to the Black Sea, resources and to create a land bridge to Crimea that had otherwise become extremely expensive to maintain as a colonial outpost. Like, just look at a map of controlled territory.

But why is it in a stalemate? In part because Russia is a nuclear power but also because the West is unwilling to let Ukraine do the one thing it could do to defend itself properly and that is to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Despite the sanctions, Russia is still allowed to sell oil and gas to places like Hungary, Slovakia, France, Belgium, India and China.

Back to the Middle East, we have Yemen, who was devastated by war and genocide at the hands of another US ally, Saudi Arabia.

The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.

[1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-rules-out-giving-ukr...