Iron Dome

Based on Wikipedia: Iron Dome

In the summer of 2006, approximately 4,000 rockets screamed across the northern Israeli sky, striking civilian areas including Haifa—the country's third largest city. Forty-four civilians lay dead. Nearly 250,000 Israelis evacuated their homes. An estimated one million people huddled in or near bomb shelters, waiting for the sirens to stop. The rockets that fell that summer—most of them short-range Katyushys fired by Hezbollah—are now the reason Israel built something it calls Iron Dome.

The threat began well before 2006. From 2000 to 2008, more than 8,000 projectiles—including an estimated 4,000 rockets and 4,000 mortar bombs—rained down on southern Israel from Gaza. Nearly one million Israelis lived within rocket range. The projectiles were crude but numerous: mostly Qassams launched by 122mm Grad launchers smuggled into the Strip, giving them longer range than simple hand-held firings. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, had cultivated an arsenal that by May 2021 would balloon to roughly 30,000 rockets and mortar bombs—all potential targets.

But Israel's northern border proved just as volatile. Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, fired rockets into Israeli population centers throughout the 1990s, posing a persistent security challenge for the Israel Defense Forces. The 2006 conflict—called the Second Lebanon War—crystallized everything into a single, terrifying reality: Israel needed to build a shield against these .