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by crisnoble 4363 days ago
Interesting, the BBC reports different stats:

"The military said its Iron Dome missile defence system had intercepted 21 of the 82 rockets fired on Wednesday, including three above Tel Aviv, three over Ashkelon and three over Ashdod."

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28240137

3 comments

Iron Dome works by calculating the trajectory of incoming rockets and leaving them alone if they're going to hit an unpopulated area, so that doesn't necessarily contradict the given statistic.
The reason for the discrepancy is that Iron Dome was only activated for 27% of rockets fired. When it was activated, it was 90% accurate. Based on some the Wikipedia article is looks like they don't bother trying to intercept rockets that wouldn't land in populated areas. I don't know if that's for cost reasons or because targeting every rocket wouldn't be technically feasible or would degrade their capability or what.
They only engage rockets that may land in populated areas.