Israel's Iron Beam laser defence system doesn’t make Israel’s air defence cheaper - it doubles them and makes the costs permanent! Right, so Israel has just locked itself into a problem it can’t engineer its way out of, and it’s called Iron Beam, they’re fancy new laser defence system being sold as a cheap as chips alternative to the likes of the Iron Dome and David’s Sling. The trouble is, somebody has done the actual sums and what’s being sold as a cheap answer to retaliation is actually a permanent cost, a permanent dependency, and a permanent admission that their whole air defence strategy isn’t working. Israel is the one affected here, its budget, its freedom of action, and its ability to pretend escalation comes without consequence, and that matters because this system only exists to keep that illusion alive. This isn’t just about a new las ...