You have several good points here. I think the most important one is that shorter distances makes missiles harder to shoot down.
The 90%-95% number does not include rockets which fell short and landed in Gaza. The 95% number comes from the Israeli armed forces (the 90% came from the Associated Press) so I expect it to make them look as good as possible which means the remaining 5% probably weren’t aimed at unoccupied areas.
According to this article the cost of an Israeli interceptor missile is $40,000-$50,000. So even if they shoot down 100% of incoming missiles it still costs 50× more to shoot down a missile than to fire one. On the one hand, the attack missiles in question are unusually cheap. On the other hand, more expensive missiles are probably harder to shoot down. On the other other hand, much of that money goes things other than defense.
Tanner Greer has betteranalyses of Taiwan’s defensive capabilities than I can write. My guess is there are many reasons you wouldn’t want to train your population in guerrilla warfare. For starters, it basically amounts to training terrorists in your own country.
You have several good points here. I think the most important one is that shorter distances makes missiles harder to shoot down.
The 90%-95% number does not include rockets which fell short and landed in Gaza. The 95% number comes from the Israeli armed forces (the 90% came from the Associated Press) so I expect it to make them look as good as possible which means the remaining 5% probably weren’t aimed at unoccupied areas.
According to this article the cost of an Israeli interceptor missile is $40,000-$50,000. So even if they shoot down 100% of incoming missiles it still costs 50× more to shoot down a missile than to fire one. On the one hand, the attack missiles in question are unusually cheap. On the other hand, more expensive missiles are probably harder to shoot down. On the other other hand, much of that money goes things other than defense.
Tanner Greer has better analyses of Taiwan’s defensive capabilities than I can write. My guess is there are many reasons you wouldn’t want to train your population in guerrilla warfare. For starters, it basically amounts to training terrorists in your own country.