Comments on: How Israel’s Drones Fought the War, Part II

By: Macaca

Macaca — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:36:29 +0000

I reckon that Phyton 5 is probably a lot more expensive then the UAV.
But said that, Israel didnt do that bad at all. Isreal had the UAVs, tweaked radar and a network in time for this war. Of course they could have had more and integrated it better, but all-in-all the 90% is nice. I wonder what would have happend if Isreal wouldn’t have had the UAVs.. maybe a full scale invasion?

By: been there

been there — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 18:15:12 +0000

why do people have to pick everything apart? just like my father told me when i was young if you look hard enough you desirve to to find something wrong.we need to stick together and fight the real bad guys.

By: Tank

Tank — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:08:28 +0000

How’s claiming to have had blanket surveillence and to have taken out 90% of launchers really look considering that rocket attacks increased throughout the engagement and their targetting resulted in so much destruction of non-military targets ?
I don’t know about “impressive” but it would certainly make the Israeli air force look better to have said they were relying on clairvoyants for all their targetting data and just had to make random guesses as to where rockets were launched from.

By: Azrael

Azrael — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 21:14:37 +0000

Boost phase? Hunting down hizb-for launch teams and their propaganda fireworks doesn’t quite equate with boost phase anything. The idf had an inconsistent post launch response of between 2–11 min, the weapon of choice seems to have been cluster munitions. The effectivness against mobile teams that set up automated launch rails seems to have been nil. The idf claims of knocking out large ssms are mainly pr with no basis in reality; had the israelis managed to actually take out one of these long range iranian missiles you can bet your bottom buck that it would’ve made cnn and be all over youtube and google movies.

By: Robot.Economist

Robot.Economist — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 20:09:38 +0000

Bill is correct. The system described in piece was not a “Boost Phase Launch Intercept” system, it is more like a “Weapons Surveillance System” (WSS).
The WSS has two pieces, non-imaging infrared sensors deployed on the border that look into battlefield and some UAVs with imaging FLIRs that loiter over it. When the non-imaging sensors read a heat bloom (indicative of weapons fire), they relay the directional info to the UAVs, which zero in on the target. The Israels basically took this to the next step by arming the UAVs so that they could engage the targets.
Its an ingenious little system if you can get all of your kit in the right place. The only problem is that it isn’t very useful if you mission is force protection. It can dish out plenty of revenge and counterstrikes though.
One question: Aren’t UAVs that are packed with explosives and sent on suicide missions actually “cruise missiles”? I thought the only dividing line between UAVs and CMs was that CMs are designed for one-way trips.

By: Haninah

Haninah — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 19:05:32 +0000

Agreed. I choked on that too a bit.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:58:14 +0000

Maybe I’m viewing this wrong but it seems to be that the Israeli’s idea of Boost Phase Launch Intercept (BPLI) is more like a search and destroy operation for launchers pre– and post-launch. To me a BPLI would be intercepting the actual rockets or missiles, which in this particular scenario would be next to impossible given the short times.