237: Chapter 237 Saturation, and then what?

Immediately after, a second sound, a third...

The explosions echoed over Gaza like dense drumbeats. White interception trails and black smoke clouds from exploding rockets sketched a bizarre yet spectacular scene against the blue sky.

Colonel Barak stared intently at the screen. The green dots (intercepted targets) increased rapidly: ten, twenty, thirty...

But just then, an operator cried out, "Colonel! Battery A reports fire channel saturation! Three more targets are approaching, and no interceptor missiles can be assigned!"

"What?!"

On the screen, three red dots broke through Battery A's fire coverage and were plummeting toward the ground at 180 meters per second!

One of them was predicted to land at—the logistics warehouse!

"Quick! Manually assign other batteries to intercept!" Barak roared.

But it was too late.

"Boom—!!!"

A massive explosion sounded from two kilometers away, shaking the windows of the command vehicle. On the screen, the icon representing the logistics warehouse turned into a red warning sign.

Of the other two rockets, one landed in an open field, and the other hit an empty barrack, starting a fire.

The entire interception process lasted less than two minutes.

As the last rocket was intercepted or shot down by ground-based anti-aircraft guns (two were hit by AA guns in the chaos), the smoke in the sky slowly dissipated.

Colonel Barak's face was ashen.

The system statistics were out: fifty incoming rockets, forty-five intercepted, five hits.

A 90% interception rate—it seemed high, but the cost was the loss of a logistics warehouse and a barrack. More importantly, those five that slipped through proved that the Iron Dome was not invincible.

"Colonel," the technical officer's voice trembled slightly, "We... we intercepted most of them..."

"Shut up!" Barak slammed his fist onto the console. "Ninety percent? I want one hundred percent! One hundred percent, do you understand?!"

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "Analyze the interception data. Why weren't those five rockets intercepted? Did the radar miss them? Or were there not enough fire channels?"

"Analyzing... Preliminary judgment is that the number of targets exceeded the fire channel limit of a single battery in a short time. When the system automatically assigned targets, it prioritized intercepting those with more dangerous trajectories or more obvious signatures. These five might have been evaluated as low priority because their flight paths were relatively flat or their reflected signals were weak. By the time it tried to intercept them, the fire channels were already full."

Barak stared at the screen; the red logistics warehouse icon was so eyesore-inducing that he wanted to smash the display.

He knew that this interception footage had surely been filmed by those rats in various ways and uploaded to the internet.

"Increase alertness," he said through gritted teeth. "They will definitely come again. Next time... next time, I'll make sure none of them return!"

What he didn't realize was that fifteen meters underground, Sinwar's team was repeatedly watching interception videos filmed from six different angles.

They were analyzing the launch timing, flight trajectory, and interception point of every interceptor missile.

They were calculating the average reaction time of the Iron Dome system from detection to launch.

They were evaluating the saturation threshold of each battery's fire channels.

And the real "fireworks show" had only just begun.

"Eight seconds."

In the underground command center, Sinwar said, pointing to a frozen frame on the screen.

The screen showed the time difference between the Iron Dome Battery A's radar detecting the first batch of rockets and the first Tamir interceptor missile leaving the rack. Precise timing: 8.2 seconds.

"From the target appearing in radar view to the system completing threat assessment, trajectory calculation, fire allocation, and launch command issuance... a total of eight seconds," reported a Death Soldier responsible for data analysis. "This is the theoretical optimal reaction time, assuming the radar captures the target the moment it enters detection range and the fire control computer isn't occupied with other tasks."

Sinwar pulled up another video. This was filmed from a camera hidden high in the ruins, at an angle that perfectly overlooked Battery A's launch site.

In the video, it could clearly be seen that four seconds after the first wave of fifteen rockets took off, Battery A's three launch boxes rotated almost simultaneously, pointing in the direction of the incoming rockets. Then, at the eighth second, the first batch of six interceptor missiles roared out.

"Very efficient," Sinwar said, "but that's the problem—their reaction is too fast."

"Too fast?" the Death Soldier beside him asked, puzzled.

"Yes, too fast." Sinwar zoomed in on the video, pointing at the launch box's rotation mechanism. "Look, their launch boxes are electrically driven, and the rotation speed is limited. It takes 1.5 to 2 seconds from receiving the command to aligning with the target's bearing. This means the radar and fire control computer must complete all calculations and issue the launch command within six seconds of the target appearing."

He pulled up the public technical parameters of the Iron Dome system: "The Iron Dome's fire control system was developed by Elta Systems. Its core is a multi-target tracking and threat assessment algorithm. It can track 200 targets simultaneously and prioritize 120 of them based on threat. But there's a key point here—its threat prioritization is based on real-time trajectory prediction."

Sinwar drew a diagram on his tablet.

"Suppose we launch fifty rockets simultaneously; the system will capture fifty targets instantly. Then, what it needs to do is: first, calculate each target's trajectory and predict the landing point; second, determine the threat level based on whether the landing point is in a critical area (military camps, towns, infrastructure); third, assign interceptor missiles in order of threat level from high to low."

"This process requires computational resources. The more targets there are, the greater the computational load, and the longer the reaction time." Sinwar looked at everyone. "And in our first attack, we only launched fifty rockets from three directions, fifteen to twenty per direction. This number is right in the Iron Dome's comfort zone—it can complete all calculations within eight seconds and then begin interception."

He paused. "But what if we quadruple the number of targets? What if we launch from six directions simultaneously?"

A Death Soldier's eyes lit up. "You mean, overloading their computing system with sheer numbers?"

"Not just the computing system," Sinwar pulled up information on the Tamir interceptor missiles. "More importantly, the fire channels. Each Iron Dome battery standard configuration is three launch boxes, twenty missiles each, but the fire control system can only guide twenty interceptor missiles to attack twenty targets at the same time. This means no matter how many interceptor missiles you have, a single battery can only handle a maximum of twenty incoming targets at once."