Danny Gold, Brains Commando
Iron Dome was funded illicitly. That didn't matter once it started intercepting rockets
On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas and its terrorist allies in the Gaza Strip fired more than 3,000 rockets into Israel in the span of 20 minutes. This barrage was the beginning of an attack—over land, in the air, and from the sea—that massacred more than 1,000 innocent people.
Through the rest of the year, Hamas fired an estimated 12,000 rockets toward Israel. Hezbollah fired hundreds more into Israel from Lebanon.
The death toll from this ferocious onslaught of rockets? 15. A tragic number, but far less than the toll from Hamas’s rampage on the ground, and far less than anyone would’ve thought possible a little more than a decade ago.
For that, Israel can thank Iron Dome, the short-range air-defense system that has guarded Israel’s cities and critical infrastructure for more than a decade. They can also thank Brigadier General (Res.) Danny Gold, the brilliant and rule-breaking leader who, more than anyone, deserves credit for the system’s deployment in record time.
In 2005, Gold led an arm of Israel’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, known as MaFat after its Hebrew abbreviation.
Gold wasn’t just any bureaucrat, even then. He was a graduate of the Israel Defense Force’s most selective unit, Talpiot, which the top two percent of Israeli high schoolers may apply to join. From this already elite group, fifty a year are selected using a rigorous battery of examinations, after which point they undergo the longest training period of any IDF conscripts, pairing rigorous classroom study in mathematics and physics with practical soldiering. According to IDF chroniclers Edward Luttwak and Eitan Shamir, graduates of the Talpiot program are nicknamed Sayeret Sechel: “brains commando.”
Danny Gold is the ultimate brains commando, boasting dual doctorates in electrical engineering and business management, which he earned in a record two years.
In late 2005, Gold turned his brainpower to a growing problem on Israel’s southern border, namely the short-range rockets that Hamas and other terrorist groups were firing at Israeli border towns. These rockets had killed more than a dozen Israelis, wounded dozens more, and paralyzed entire communities through terror.
MaFat and the IDF had already assessed existing missile-defense systems. None satisfied. Some systems used interceptors that were too expensive to justify against Qassem rockets that cost roughly $500 a pop. Others relied on technology, like laser beams, that were too nascent to be deployed on any useful timeframe. Still others could provide only pinpoint protection, instead of the blanket protection needed for entire towns. A new solution was needed. Gold decided to mobilize Israel’s scientific community and industry to find the solution.
In February 2006, one month after Hamas won Palestinian elections to rule the Gaza Strip, Gold announced a “technology demonstrator” for a short-range missile-defense system. This project became more urgent later that year, following more deadly salvoes of rockets from Gaza and a bloody war with Hezbollah in the north.
Gold’s mandate—and his organization’s funding—was for research and development. This meant conducting experiments and creating inexpensive prototypes. He went well beyond this, giving his team the hyper-ambitious goal of fully developing a system and having it ready for mass production within 36 months.
To achieve this goal, Gold tapped the country’s brightest engineers, from 25-year-olds fresh out of school to grizzled veterans on the cusp of retirement. These engineers had to solve thorny questions of physics, mathematics, and materials science, such as: how exactly could they strike a projectile traveling faster than a speeding bullet with another projectile? How could they predict the trajectory of those projectiles fast enough to shoot them down? How could they do all this cheaply enough to be worth the effort?
Critically, Gold also brought rank-and-file IDF airmen into the development process. Given Israel’s mandatory national service requirement, its military is staffed predominantly by young conscripts, not highly trained professional soldiers. If Iron Dome was going to be a success, its developers needed to make sure it was simple and intuitive to use. So the development team solicited feedback on the design from the actual men and women who would be operating the systems—a great example of “forward-deployed engineering” in practice.
Gold also enlisted industry in the effort, selecting Rafael to build interceptors, Israel Aerospace Industries to build the radar, and mPrest Systems to develop the software and fire-control system. Like fellow heretic Colonel Hall, Gold was not above breaking rules in service of a greater cause. With no funding or authorization of his own, he persuaded Rafael and IAI—both state-owned enterprises—to front the cash for the project and begin tooling assembly lines. The companies did this at considerable risk. They would lose all of their money if the project failed. But this only motivated them to work harder. They had skin in the game.
Then again, all of the participants had skin in the game. The sense of national emergency spurred team members to superheroic work schedules and creativity. Rockets were falling on their home almost daily. Neighbors and family members’ lives and limbs were on the line. Incredible speed and ingenuity are possible under such conditions.
On such a compressed schedule, activities normally conducted sequentially happened simultaneously. The interceptor, radar system, and fire-control system were designed, and re-designed, in tandem. The systems were prototyped and tested while still in the design process. Industry tooled its assembly lines for production without fully knowing what it was going to build. Orchestrating this chaos and avoiding disaster required constant contact, feedback, and flexibility from all parties. Gold likened the challenge to “running 15 serious start-up companies at the same time.”
The final result of this crash effort was a missile-defense system consisting of three parts: a radar system to detect incoming rockets, a command center to select which rockets to destroy, and interceptor batteries to fire the kill shot. What truly differentiated the system was highly advanced software that could determine which incoming rockets were on target and therefore dangerous, and which were errant and not worth shooting down. Iron Dome’s ability to pick and choose targets allows it to conserve interceptors, which, at roughly $50,000 per unit, are “inexpensive” only in relation to other guided missiles of their type.
The darkest day for the Iron Dome program came in early 2009, when the State Comptroller of Israel released a report condemning Gold for breaking the rules and “overriding the exclusive jurisdiction of the IDF Chief of Staff, the Minister of Defense, and the Israeli Government as a whole.” The report alleged that billions of shekels and countless man hours had been wasted on a technology that still hadn’t been proven.
The charges are laughable in retrospect—and they didn’t stand up long at the time, either. Within months of the report’s publication, Iron Dome intercepted multiple targets in tests. Within two years, the first battery was deployed near Gaza. Iron Dome intercepted its first enemy rocket in April 2011, just five years after Gold announced the project’s start.
Luttwak and Shamir observe that Gold’s “highly irregular—indeed prohibited—procedures seem to have favored rather than hindered the project.” The Israeli government seems to have come to the same conclusion. Rather than punishing the Iron Dome team for its insubordination, they awarded it the Israel Defense Prize—and promoted Gold to head of MaFat in 2016.
But the best tribute to Gold’s success are the echoing thumps of the Iron Dome interceptors, which can be heard almost daily in the skies over Israel’s cities.
Each thump represents a threat neutralized and, quite possibly, a life saved.
Further Reading
The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons From the Israel Defense Forces by Edward N. Luttwak and Eitan Shamir
“The Gray Matter Behind the Iron Dome,” Israel Hayom