Israelis Sue Government for Laser Cannons

[Sidewinder]

Hell, what happens if the laser system is installed, overwhemed, and a rocket hits one of the reactant tanks?

I was going to bring up this problem as well. The people suing the Israeli government for THEL seem to have forgotten the logisitical problems posed by the VERY TOXIC chemicals it uses.

[Sea Skimmer]

Let's not try and use fantasy scenarios as arguments against something. Given just how shitty Palestinian rockets are, that type of hit would be a one in a million (or more) shot.

One in a million hits happen disturbingly often in warfare, and of course chemical spills can easily happen from handling accidents or simply a truck crash during transport.

[Ace Pace]

Or they could take a more offensive posture, and keep Predator-style drones flying over the areas that the local militants like to launch rockets at Israel from - and whenever they spot someone with a rackful of missiles in the back of their pickup truck, blow them up with a Hellfire. Or whenever they're spotted setting up a launcher in a field.

Should nicely solve the problem of having to wait until they fire.

They already do that actually, but the world tends to get pissed when the rocket launchers are in the middle of an intersection inside a refugee camp and a bunch of gawking civilians get blown away at the same time. Anyway, just look at how many places they have to look at and then remember that a UAV has one camera and one narrow field of view.

Just today, there was a half-ways interesting article in Channel 2 TV here, which basically said there existed a similar situation to what you described. Theres a small plane run by the IAF, outfitted with enough cameras and men from the Intel branch and they spend most of their time in the air tracking rockets. However, they also mentioned how they can't always act.