The interception rate of the Iron Dome basically doesn't matter anyways. If ever, for example, Hezbollah or even Hamas actually decide to seriously strike Israel, they will completely saturate the Iron Dome.
This is also probably why it's interception rate is higher - these attacks haven't been even from Hamas and have been in very small concentration.
It's a tough pill to swallow, but if the Palestinians or Iranians ever decide to drown Israel in rocket artillery, there is no real possible defense.
At around ~500$ for a bog standard MLRS rocket, it costs about as much to buy a literal million rockets than it costs for a single F-35 over its lifetime. These are, by the way, far more accurate, far faster, and pack a lot more of a punch than the rockets that are being launched lately.
The only bottleneck Hezbollah has is really that it's pretty difficult to actually supply the rockets.
My understanding from that is, the Iron Dome system has a decision making phase where it's able to see where the missile is headed. If it's headed to an unpopulated area, it's ignored. If it's headed towards a built up area, then it tries to intercept. It's that over-urban-area interception rate which has increased, which is quite impressive
It is basically impossible to intercept an ICBM in the terminal phase, except with nuclear interceptors, and even then.
So you need high altitude interception. The problem is that it's really easy for ICBMs to decoy themselves when they are out of the atmosphere. For example, simply wrapping the warheads in a much larger Mylar balloon and then packing a few hundred identical balloons that are empty makes interception basically impossible - you're going have perhaps a few hundred thousand targets to intercept in case of a nuclear strike, which is simply impossible. By the time the balloons pop or slow down enough in the atmosphere, it's essentially too late.
The other alternative is early interception, but the only relatively credible design for that is hundreds of nuclear powered laser satellites. Which poses the issue of those satellites themselves being overheated by lasers and disabled in seconds.
Iron Dome shoots down home made slow moving rockets literally powered by sugar. the difference is almost as large shooting down an ICBM vs a paper airplane.
No, intercept missiles are not ballistic but are guided, which negates the distance factor as you can simply make course corrections while homing into the target. ICBMs travel at Mach 23 (28.000km/h), that is what makes it a hard target to hit. It's like trying to hit a speeding bullet,but actually, it's travelling 30 times faster than a bullet.
This is also probably why it's interception rate is higher - these attacks haven't been even from Hamas and have been in very small concentration.
It's a tough pill to swallow, but if the Palestinians or Iranians ever decide to drown Israel in rocket artillery, there is no real possible defense.
At around ~500$ for a bog standard MLRS rocket, it costs about as much to buy a literal million rockets than it costs for a single F-35 over its lifetime. These are, by the way, far more accurate, far faster, and pack a lot more of a punch than the rockets that are being launched lately.
The only bottleneck Hezbollah has is really that it's pretty difficult to actually supply the rockets.