Iron Dome is a mobile all-weather air defense system developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. The system is designed to intercept and destroy short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to 70 kilometres (43 mi) away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area. Israel hopes to increase the range of Iron Dome's interceptions, from the current maximum of 70 kilometres (43 mi) to 250 kilometres (160 mi) and make it more versatile so that it could intercept rockets coming from two directions simultaneously.
In addition to their land-based deployment, Iron Dome batteries will in the future be deployed at sea, where they will protect off-shore gas platforms in conjunction with Israel's Barak 8 missile system.
Iron Dome is part of a future multi-tiered missile defense system that Israel is developing, which includes Arrow 2, Arrow 3, Iron Beam, Barak 8 and David's Sling.
Project leader Colonel S. and his team in the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (Maf'at) had very little spare time, and only on the weekends could they think of an appropriate name for the system. According to Colonel S., "The first name I thought of was 'Anti-Qassam', but when the project started to move forward I realized it was problematic... I sat down with my wife, and together we thought of suitable names. She suggested the name 'Tamir' (Hebrew acronym for טיל מיירט, Til Meyaret, 'interceptor missile') for the missile, and for the system itself we thought of 'Golden Dome'. The following Sunday, 'Tamir' was immediately approved, but there was a problem with 'Golden Dome'—it could be perceived as ostentatious. So it was changed to 'Iron Dome' ". More details
