Since much praise has been heaped on Iron Dome as of late and clearly it has saved hundreds of lives since its initial deployment, especially in this past week, I thought I'd share this.

It relies on the same technology as an American system that is not a secret per se, but has largely flown under the radar that completed its first successful test within about a month of Iron Dome.

The patents trace back to a 2010 filing (priority May 11, 2009... this indicates the earliest date that the idea was written down and notarized) by a number of individuals associated with a company known as Ball Aerospace, which has made a small fortune selling technology based upon the initial patents.

Fun fact: The LiDAR used in iPhones and in self-driving cars is based upon different, inferior designs due to Ball Aerospace beating them to the punch on the single-aperture LADAR concept by years.

More recently, one of the engineer's sons has begun claiming that the idea was actually his and that his father stole the idea from him after he casually floated it in their living room. His son also says that idea wasn't even his originally, but that he, in turn, actually stole it from THIS website.

Can anyone shine any light on this, no pun intended?