Bluezoo
04-19-2005, 10:43 AM
UAV Finds Flaw in Israeli Air Defenses
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME, TEL AVIV
April 18, 2005
For the second time in five months, Hizbollah militants operating an Iranian-made drone successfully penetrated Israel’s vaunted air defenses and flew unmolested — this time for nearly nine minutes on April 11 — over Western Galilee cities and settlements before returning safely to southern Lebanon.
The embarrassing episode was rendered all the more egregious since Israeli military intelligence had advanced warning of an impending Hizbollah operation. Nevertheless, it was local residents — rather than Israel’s elaborate, overlapping sensor-fused early warning network — that first reported the offending unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
And by the time the Israel Air Force vectored fighters and combat helicopters to intercept the intruder, the camera-equipped UAV had already crossed back into Lebanese territory with fresh video streams from the estimated 18-mile, roundtrip flight.
There are broader implications of Hizbollah’s intrusion into Israel. Hizbollah demonstrated that any nation — even those with sophisticated, state-of-the-art, layered air defense systems — are vulnerable to attack by inexpensive, low-tech weapons that could be armed and dangerous.
Abdullah Qasir, a member of the Lebanese parliament who directs Hizbollah activities in south Lebanon, said the UAV flew all the way to the coastal city of Akko before returning to base. In a November flight, the Hizbollah-operated drone managed half that distance — to the Israeli town of Nahariyya — before crash landing in the sea off the Lebanese coast.
The Israel Air Force, however, disputes Hizbollah claims of reaching Akko, insisting the UAV made it slightly south of Nahariya before looping northward back to Lebanon. Regardless of the precise flight path, officials here acknowledged the public relations bonanza that Hizbollah scored at Israel’s expense.
“As long as Israel continues to violate Lebanese airspace and waterways, Hizbollah will keep sending these drones,” Qasir said.
Qasir estimated Israeli aircraft and gunboats breached Lebanese territory more than 80 times in the week prior to the UAV deployment. He declined to provide operational details of the unmanned system, known in Lebanon as the Mirsad-1, although sources said it is part of the Mohajer series of UAVs built by Iran’s state-owned Qods Aviation Industries.
Officials and experts here were quick to downplay the strategic significance of the April 11 operation, insisting it was merely a propaganda coup by militants seeking to draw attention from meetings that day in Crawford, Texas, between U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Nevertheless, they conceded that blatant violations of the nation’s airspace threaten to erode Israeli deterrence and embolden other terror groups.
Moreover, many here insisted last week’s unmanned reconnaissance flight and the earlier incident last November should serve as a wake-up call for Israel’s defense establishment, which is reluctant to recognize such forms of asymmetrical warfare as militarily meaningful threats.
“I figure that the assessment of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is that this incident is unimportant,” said retired Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, former head of IDF military intelligence.
“But in the end, the quantity of these acts starts to have a qualitative effect. If there will be enough of these unimportant propaganda events, they can have a cumulative impact on deterrence.”
A Global Issue?
But some experts here say the growing resourcefulness and daring of Hizbollah — and the potential for al-Qaida and other violent groups to emulate and escalate asymmetrical means of attack — warrant new attitudes and international cooperation.
“The prospect that small UAVs could be used as delivery vehicles for chemical or biological attack is not insignificant,” said retired Maj. Gen. Uzi Eilam, a former director of defense research and development. “This whole subject, in terms of homeland security, has hardly been addressed and cooperation with regard to countermeasures and defense is almost nonexistent.”
According to Eilam, now an analyst at Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, the problem is not technology, but the priority and resources that nations choose to devote to nontraditional, asymmetrical threats.
“I argue that the advanced world gives too much weight to conventional threats of the past,” Eilam said. “Dealing with emerging asymmetrical threats requires a fresh approach and a new world view. It’s time to switch discs.”
Col. Udi Gal, a retired scientific deputy in Israel’s Defense Research and Development Directorate, agreed that technological solutions are within grasp, provided that the IDF or other countries designate small, low-flying UAVs as a significant threat.
“This issue has been on the table of decision makers here for a long time,” Gal said. “Once the requirement is endorsed, a partial solution to specific, pinpoint sectors can be provided in less than a year, while a full solution could take three or four years.”
“It is possible to take small, pinpoint areas of a few kilometers and erect a nearly impenetrable screen from the ground. But for larger areas, you need to turn to an airborne solution: special look-down/shoot-down radar capabilities with context understanding software that can be carried by balloons or other low-cost, long-endurance platforms.”
A spokesman from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., said the possibility of drones violating North American airspace was “very, very low.”
Very Grave Incident
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz characterized the Hizbollah overflight as “a very grave incident” and has directed the IDF “to take all steps to prevent such incidents from happening in future,” a spokeswoman said.
Just hours before the UAV penetrated Israeli airspace at about 5:30 p.m. local time on April 11, Mofaz and a military intelligence official told lawmakers in Jerusalem they expected Hizbollah to wage “provocations” along the northern border. .........
For the full article, please go to:
http://www.isrjournal.com/story.php?F=792603
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME, TEL AVIV
April 18, 2005
For the second time in five months, Hizbollah militants operating an Iranian-made drone successfully penetrated Israel’s vaunted air defenses and flew unmolested — this time for nearly nine minutes on April 11 — over Western Galilee cities and settlements before returning safely to southern Lebanon.
The embarrassing episode was rendered all the more egregious since Israeli military intelligence had advanced warning of an impending Hizbollah operation. Nevertheless, it was local residents — rather than Israel’s elaborate, overlapping sensor-fused early warning network — that first reported the offending unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
And by the time the Israel Air Force vectored fighters and combat helicopters to intercept the intruder, the camera-equipped UAV had already crossed back into Lebanese territory with fresh video streams from the estimated 18-mile, roundtrip flight.
There are broader implications of Hizbollah’s intrusion into Israel. Hizbollah demonstrated that any nation — even those with sophisticated, state-of-the-art, layered air defense systems — are vulnerable to attack by inexpensive, low-tech weapons that could be armed and dangerous.
Abdullah Qasir, a member of the Lebanese parliament who directs Hizbollah activities in south Lebanon, said the UAV flew all the way to the coastal city of Akko before returning to base. In a November flight, the Hizbollah-operated drone managed half that distance — to the Israeli town of Nahariyya — before crash landing in the sea off the Lebanese coast.
The Israel Air Force, however, disputes Hizbollah claims of reaching Akko, insisting the UAV made it slightly south of Nahariya before looping northward back to Lebanon. Regardless of the precise flight path, officials here acknowledged the public relations bonanza that Hizbollah scored at Israel’s expense.
“As long as Israel continues to violate Lebanese airspace and waterways, Hizbollah will keep sending these drones,” Qasir said.
Qasir estimated Israeli aircraft and gunboats breached Lebanese territory more than 80 times in the week prior to the UAV deployment. He declined to provide operational details of the unmanned system, known in Lebanon as the Mirsad-1, although sources said it is part of the Mohajer series of UAVs built by Iran’s state-owned Qods Aviation Industries.
Officials and experts here were quick to downplay the strategic significance of the April 11 operation, insisting it was merely a propaganda coup by militants seeking to draw attention from meetings that day in Crawford, Texas, between U.S. President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Nevertheless, they conceded that blatant violations of the nation’s airspace threaten to erode Israeli deterrence and embolden other terror groups.
Moreover, many here insisted last week’s unmanned reconnaissance flight and the earlier incident last November should serve as a wake-up call for Israel’s defense establishment, which is reluctant to recognize such forms of asymmetrical warfare as militarily meaningful threats.
“I figure that the assessment of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is that this incident is unimportant,” said retired Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, former head of IDF military intelligence.
“But in the end, the quantity of these acts starts to have a qualitative effect. If there will be enough of these unimportant propaganda events, they can have a cumulative impact on deterrence.”
A Global Issue?
But some experts here say the growing resourcefulness and daring of Hizbollah — and the potential for al-Qaida and other violent groups to emulate and escalate asymmetrical means of attack — warrant new attitudes and international cooperation.
“The prospect that small UAVs could be used as delivery vehicles for chemical or biological attack is not insignificant,” said retired Maj. Gen. Uzi Eilam, a former director of defense research and development. “This whole subject, in terms of homeland security, has hardly been addressed and cooperation with regard to countermeasures and defense is almost nonexistent.”
According to Eilam, now an analyst at Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, the problem is not technology, but the priority and resources that nations choose to devote to nontraditional, asymmetrical threats.
“I argue that the advanced world gives too much weight to conventional threats of the past,” Eilam said. “Dealing with emerging asymmetrical threats requires a fresh approach and a new world view. It’s time to switch discs.”
Col. Udi Gal, a retired scientific deputy in Israel’s Defense Research and Development Directorate, agreed that technological solutions are within grasp, provided that the IDF or other countries designate small, low-flying UAVs as a significant threat.
“This issue has been on the table of decision makers here for a long time,” Gal said. “Once the requirement is endorsed, a partial solution to specific, pinpoint sectors can be provided in less than a year, while a full solution could take three or four years.”
“It is possible to take small, pinpoint areas of a few kilometers and erect a nearly impenetrable screen from the ground. But for larger areas, you need to turn to an airborne solution: special look-down/shoot-down radar capabilities with context understanding software that can be carried by balloons or other low-cost, long-endurance platforms.”
A spokesman from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., said the possibility of drones violating North American airspace was “very, very low.”
Very Grave Incident
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz characterized the Hizbollah overflight as “a very grave incident” and has directed the IDF “to take all steps to prevent such incidents from happening in future,” a spokeswoman said.
Just hours before the UAV penetrated Israeli airspace at about 5:30 p.m. local time on April 11, Mofaz and a military intelligence official told lawmakers in Jerusalem they expected Hizbollah to wage “provocations” along the northern border. .........
For the full article, please go to:
http://www.isrjournal.com/story.php?F=792603