Silicon Chip – May 2019

20 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au

vehicle if necessary (see Fig.21).
Other counter-drone systems exist,
but almost none of these have the hard
kill capability of Drone Dome. Another
counter-drone system with hard kill ca-
pability is the Israeli General Robotics
Pitbull AD (siliconchip.com.au/link/
aaow) which uses a 5.56mm or 7.62mm
machine gun to destroy drones and has
other capabilities as well.
See the videos titled “Rafael ‘Drone
Dome’” via siliconchip.com.au/link/
aaox (showing the destruction of a
drone with the laser), “Rafael’s Horow-
itz: Drone Dome’s Light Beam Helps It
Quickly Defeat Long-Range Threats”
via siliconchip.com.au/link/aaoy (an
interview) and “Drone Dome 360° air-
space defence against hostile drones”
via siliconchip.com.au/link/aaoz

Iron Dome

Rafael (www.rafael.co.il) had other
offerings on display, including Iron
Dome, which is a missile system de-
signed to intercept and destroy incom-
ing enemy rockets and artillery shells

(Fig.25).

It has an operating range of 4-70km.

In military parlance, it is known as a

C-RAM system for Counter Rocket, Ar-

tillery and Mortar.

Iron Dome is combat-proven with

over 1500 successful interceptions

since it was introduced in 2011.

It is the only such combat-proven

system in operation in the world. Its

missiles are guided toward an airborne

threat and they explode in its vicinity,

to detonate the incoming warhead out-

side the defended area.

During flight, the Iron Dome inter-

ceptor receives trajectory updates from

a Battle Management Centre via a data

link. It is designed only to intercept

threats heading toward the defended

area, as it is pointless intercepting a

threat that will land in an unoccupied

location.

See the videos via siliconchip.com.

au/link/aap0 and siliconchip.com.au/

link/aap1 C-Dome is a sea-based vari-

ant of the Iron Dome designed to pro-

tect ships and other maritime assets.

Iron Dome is part of a multi-level air

defence system being developed or in

operation, which combines it with the

following additional systems:

• Iron Beam, a defensive laser weap-
  on designed to shoot down short-
  range rockets, artillery, and mortars
  which are too small or too close for
  Iron Dome, with a range of up to 7km


• Barak 8, jointly developed with In-
  dia, which is a point-defence sys-
  tem which can defend against any
  airborne threat such as aircraft, hel-
  icopters, anti-ship missiles, UAVs
  and ballistic missiles with a range
  of 500m to 100km


• the Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile
  (ABM) system with a range of 90km-
  150km


• David’s Sling, which is designed to
  intercept enemy planes, drones, tac-
  tical ballistic missiles, medium to
  long-range rockets and cruise mis-
  siles at ranges of 40-300km


• the Arrow 3 ABM with a range
  thought to be about 2400km

Freespace giant drone racing

Freespace Drone Racing (https://

freespaceracing.com) is an Australian

Fig.25 (left): an Iron Dome missile on

display at the Airshow. It is used for

intercepting inbound rockets, artillery

and mortar rounds.

Fig.26 (right): a Freespace FS1 giant

racing drone. It is 1.3m tall and

weighs over 25kg, with a top speed

of 220km/h. The drone is shown in

its flight orientation, with its wings

aligned with the direction of airflow

from the rotors.

Fig.21: Drone Dome in a mobile application with four radar
units, for 360º coverage.

Fig.22: the giant Freespace drone racing course in

Barcelona.