A crucial part of Israel’s Tamir interceptor, which is used in the middle-range Iron Dome air defense system, seems to have fallen intact in the Gaza Strip, potentially creating a major leak of secret rocket technology.

 

Like many other interceptors, the Tamir missile destroys enemy projectiles by approaching them mid-course and detonating its warhead. The tricky part is correctly identifying the right time for the detonation.

 

The timing must be perfect, considering the astounding speeds at which both the targeted projectile and the interceptor travel. So, it’s no surprise that the components responsible for it, the active radar seeker and the fuse section, are highly classified (and sought-after by anyone wishing to reverse engineer the Israeli technology). Usually an interceptor that fails to hit its target self-destructs to protect its secrets.

 

But one Tamir missile seems to have been recovered by someone in the Gaza Strip with this highly-sensitive part still intact, defense news website The Drive reports. The evidence of the possible technology loss was published on Twitter by Joe Truzman, an Israeli defense expert and author of the GroundBrief newsletter.