27.05.2021 – 20:19
Daniel Gold is the engineer who invented the anti-missile system that protects Israel. The story of a visionary and his leitmotif: save lives.
The Foglio
The last few days in Israel have had a sound and a color. The sound is the siren ringing that warns that the rockets are coming and that you have to run, as soon as possible through the basements, through the shelters. Behind the siren, an explosion, is the Iron Dome that hit the rockets fired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The blast then generates a bright flame and a red, chemical, unnatural sky, “is the color of war,” says a voice on the phone from Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel. Iron Dome is the Israeli anti-missile system that watches Palestinian missiles as they take off, calculates trajectories and decides whether to hit them with a missile to destroy them or let them fall.
Everything is very fast and, if it were not for this system, the losses for the Jewish state during the two weeks when Hamas has launched more than 4000 missiles would have been much more, they were 12, there has never been so much dead among Israeli civilians. “The habit of feeling the danger is not lost, try it once and stay attached. It always holds within itself, it is a constant companionship. A fluid denser than the blood it feels circulates through the veins.
That is why the Iron Dome has been important, we all here at Kfar Aza know it and try to repeat to ourselves that we can be comfortable, but from this already proven sense of danger there is no way out. These are the unseen wounds of this war, but it is hoped that they will not be left to the younger generations, and in this respect the Iron Dome plays a very important role.
What he conceived, promoted and realized was a battle that decided to name an engineer with two research doctorates – one in Electronic Engineering, the other in Business Management – who today heads the Defense Research and Development Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. His name is Daniel Gold, of Hungarian origin, born in Israel and raised with an idea: that the Jewish state was a wonderful place to live, but it also had to be safe. He has decided to carry out his studies on a mission: to save the highest number of lives and “maintain the continuity of life in Israel.” When he first appeared before the Defense establishment with his proposal to destroy the missiles with other ultra-accurate missiles, everyone thought he was some hardy, some crazy, “we are not here to play star wars.” , have responded. But Daniel Gold had every intention of making the impossible possible.
The idea had come to him during the Gulf War, he was in Tel Aviv, against which Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles. From those days the feeling of a paralyzed, empty city has remained in his head. At that time it had just ended
university and thought that Israelis should not be allowed to live in fear. After the first failure before the defense leaders, Gold did not wait for the green light from the political and military leaders and, in order to avoid his project, which was still just an idea, remaining stuck in the whirlpool of institutional battles, had begun. already moving at his expense.
As early as 2004 he had set up a committee to study the various options for anti-missile technology, he continued his research in open violation of a directive of the Ministry of Defense, according to which the project did not deserve to move forward. Gold, who did not intend to give up his idea – today says he did not break the rules, but simply avoided bureaucracy – asked a private investor. He had turned out to be an eccentric guy, very enthusiastic and he knew that without a concrete result to show, the Defense leaders would not change their opinion about his anti-missiles.
However, two years later even the most skeptical were convinced. The biggest promoter of the system had become Defense Minister Amir Peretz, the then head of security coming from Sderot and well aware of the priority of responding to a missile rain, as soon as the Lebanon war was over. Although Peretz was all against it, Gold took the funds to go further, the project was assigned to Rafael, with whom the engineer had already been put in contact, and two other companies collaborated to develop the software and radar. Gold wanted a great team, the “country’s cream”, 70-year-old retired rocket experts and 25-year-old engineers, men and women.
In an interview with “Yisrael Hayom” he said: “It was like managing 15 different start-ups at the same time, which should work in harmony with each other and do it in record time. “Without hierarchy, a horizontal job.” The project was not simple, ways had to be found to constantly scan the whole of Gaza, to detect the launched missile and especially to set up a control center able to calculate the trajectory within a maximum of 15 seconds. It took years, there was zero margin of error and the Israeli government needed money. Peretz tried to address US President Bush, but the answer was no.
To Americans, the system conceived by Daniel Gold was “something that can not be done.” It was Barack Obama who believed in the project and supported it with $ 200 million. Gold research went better and better, the system became faster and more accurate, for the design the developers were inspired by a model of small children’s cars. The time had come to give it a name. Systems and missiles, even anti-missiles. If Gold is the father, the inventor, the promoter, Don Quixote of the Iron Dome, it was not he who chose the name.
The missiles were supposed to be called anti-Qassam, after Hamas missiles, but in the end they decided to call them Tamir, an acronym for Til Meyaret, interceptor missiles. It remained to find a name for the system, the first proposal being the Golden Dome. But the name was rejected, it seemed too exaggerated, cheeky. The system had to really represent a solid idea of security, it should not have turned out to be ridiculous, better Iron Dome, iron dome, in Hebrew barzel kipat. In 2011, the IDF (Israel Defense Force) declares the operating system.
It is a system consisting of 3 parts: a radar, a control center and interceptor missiles. The radar intercepts the missile, the control center calculates the trajectory, Tamir destroys it, but is released only if there is a risk of hitting inhabited centers. Today in Israel there are about 10 batteries scattered throughout the country, each with 3 or 4 launchers capable of firing 20 interceptor missiles. It is a costly operation and these were the first criticisms Daniel Gold faced after he had demonstrated that the system worked.
Each battery costs $ 100 million, each missile 50,000, while the production of missiles used by Hamas at the economic level is much less costly. At the moment no way to reduce costs has been found, but the benefits turn out to be higher and during the clashes of these weeks Iron Dome has intercepted over 1400 missiles launched from the Gaza Strip. A very high number that has put pressure on the system.
In 2012 Gold receives an important award from the Ministry of Defense, from the insane was turned into a visionary. He emphasizes that it is a very short step in reality, that his greatest pride has been what has transformed science fiction, the “star wars” into a reality. No one would have bet that one missile could be neutralized by another missile, in flight and within seconds. The collision produces belts of light, that first color of warfare from Kfar Aza kibbutz, which is also a safety nuance difficult to sum up after recognizing the anxiety of danger.
In the beginning it was a war against windmills, Gold said, that despite early successes, Barack Obama’s belief in demonstrating the usefulness of the Iron Dome continued to be treated as extravagant engineering, one that had violated a Department of Defense directive, with a smile always embedded in his face and paved voice. In 2014, during Operation “Defense Margin”, he became a national hero, people stopped him on the streets, took pictures with him: he is the father of Iron Dome.
Daniel Gold’s parents survived the Holocaust and he is convinced that it was this, the common pain of all the Jewish people, that made him think about survival, at all costs. He described it as a strong, inner motto, the need to always be one step ahead of the enemy. And last year another enemy came: the coronavirus. The pandemic must have reminded him of the anger he experienced when watching Tel Aviv lonely and empty during the Gulf War. Since March last year, his department within the Ministry of Defense has completely changed scope and is dedicated to anti-virus research. In Israel, he told the New York Times if it was up to them
completed a mission, behaves like in war. “Everyone stops doing what they were doing and throws energy and creativity on the new target.” His team, always large, always with people from different sectors, always horizontal, is focused on 3 issues: the production of fans, helping hospitals in overcrowding management and testing, the real “game changer”. He studied a type of tampon based on breathing, sniffing and artificial intelligence with the result being obtained in 60 seconds.
As with the Iron Dome, time and speed were the factors to increase. Against missiles and against the virus. The circumstances and motives that pushed Gold to develop the anti-missile system and look for ways to curb the pandemic are similar. Anger at fear, the desire for freedom, to save lives, the feeling of frustration in the face of the empty and paralyzed place. The desire to make Israel not only a wonderful country, but also safe. But this time Gold did not have to fight against hostile political leaders, he is no longer an engineer out of the schemes, accused of violating the directives of the Ministry of Defense, stubbornly optimistic and with fantastic-scientific claims.
It is the guarantor of Israel’s security, which speaks little about itself, much about its country, endlessly about what it still has to do to protect it, from everything, tirelessly. In March last year he was invited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he immediately realized that the pandemic was a serious and serious threat. Under the believing eyes of the Israelites, he has entered the work they already know and feel safe with.
Daniel Gold continues to work on the Iron Dome, which ensures it is constantly evolving, with more reasons after the recent war that has put its resilience to the test. “This today is certainly not the 2013 Iron Dome. Hamas is evolving and we can not stand idly by.” The enemy must always stay one step ahead. Israel lives in the exaltation of the Iron Dome which these days has once again shown its necessity.
It is part of the country in such a way that it has even become a model for small cars or, better yet, it has turned out to be a children’s game that inspired its design, and the Tamir rockets have become a film of animated for children. The protagonist is a rocket, Tili, which explains how it works, why it exists, why it explodes, why it makes noise and why after the noise there should be no fear: “If you see smoke in the sky, if you hear noise, it is me, your Tili”.
The anti-missile system has also entered the pop culture of the country, part of that complex daily life that should not stop the future. Tili serves to remove the feeling of constant danger, that fluid heavier than the blood that once enters the veins no longer comes out, to preserve the latest generations, which as Gold has said are the guarantee of Israel’s continuity.
But beyond the Iron Dome is the rest you work for, an enemy in turn and one of the engineer’s fixed points, often called on in Israeli universities to show, is: choose your field, deepen, be the best at it, but do not be affectionate, deal with others, reinvent yourself, do new things, if you study, study and work, if you have studied and work, get another degree, mix, listen, work in groups, side by side, with zero ego and , above all, save lives./gazetatema