British army Apache attack heli­copters in Afghanistan are the only Apaches in the coun­try that fly with the mast-​​mounted Longbow radar installed — and that is giv­ing them a dis­tinc­tive edge in the NATO-​​led oper­a­tions against Taliban and other oppos­ing mil­i­tant forces, the com­man­der of the unit says.

Lt.Col. Jon Bryant, com­mand­ing offi­cer of the Apache-​​equipped No. 3 Regiment (Army Air Corps) at Wattisham, Suffolk, says that the Longbow radar is “extremely use­ful in air­space decon­flic­tion terms.”

“When on patrol, we are shar­ing the air­space with other Apaches, Chinooks, Lynxes, fixed-​​wing air­craft and unmanned aer­ial vehi­cles,” says Col. Bryant, who recently returned from a tour as com­mand­ing offi­cer of Britain’s Joint Helicopter Force (Afghanistan) at Kandahar Air Field, south­ern Afghanistan.

Especially at night, the radar helps pilots to build up sit­u­a­tional aware­ness and to pre­vent get­ting dan­ger­ously close to other air­craft dur­ing tac­ti­cal maneuvers.

See the rest of this arti­cle from our Aviation Week part­ners at Military​.com.

– Christian

Our friends at Av Week have this story so wired, I couldnt wait to post this update. And, as you well know, Im a bit obsessed with it.

It now seems that one of Israels first shots in its raid into Syria in September was a fusil­lade of 1s and 0s.

From Aviation Week:

The U.S. was mon­i­tor­ing the elec­tronic emis­sions com­ing from Syria dur­ing Israels September attack; andalthough there was no direct American help in destroy­ing a nuclear reac­torthere was some advice pro­vided before­hand, mil­i­tary and aero­space indus­try offi­cials tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.

That sur­veil­lance is pro­vid­ing clues about how Israeli air­craft man­aged to slip past Syrian air defenses to bomb the site at Dayr az-​​Zawr. The main attack was pre­ceded by an engage­ment with a sin­gle Syrian radar site at Tall al-​​Abuad near the Turkish bor­der. It was assaulted with what appears to be a com­bi­na­tion of elec­tronic attack and pre­ci­sion bombs to enable the Israeli force to enter and exit Syrian air­space. Almost imme­di­ately, the entire Syrian radar sys­tem went off the air for a period of time that included the raid, say U.S. intel­li­gence analysts.

There was no U.S. active engage­ment other than con­sult­ing on poten­tial tar­get vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, says a U.S. elec­tronic war­fare specialist.

Elements of the attack included some brute-​​force jam­ming, which is still an impor­tant ele­ment of attack­ing air defenses, U.S. ana­lysts say. Also, Syrian air defenses are still cen­tral­ized and depen­dent on ded­i­cated HF and VHF com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which made them vul­ner­a­ble. The ana­lysts dont believe any part of Syrias elec­tri­cal grid was shut down. They do con­tend that net­work pen­e­tra­tion involved both remote air-​​to-​​ground elec­tronic attack and pen­e­tra­tion through computer-​​to-​​computer links.

There also were some higher-​​level, non­tac­ti­cal pen­e­tra­tions, either direct or as diver­sions and spoofs, of the Syrian command-​​and-​​control capa­bil­ity, done through net­work attack, says an intel­li­gence specialist.

These obser­va­tions pro­vide evi­dence that a sophis­ti­cated net­work attack and elec­tronic hack­ing capa­bil­ity is an oper­a­tional part of the Israel Defense Forces arse­nal of dig­i­tal weapons.

Despite being hob­bled by the restric­tions of secrecy and diplo­macy, Israeli mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment offi­cials con­firm that net­work inva­sion, infor­ma­tion war­fare and elec­tronic attack are part of Israels defense capabilities. 

And the cool thing was that it seems that Israel was able to do this cyber attack from the air.

That abil­ity of non­stealthy Israeli air­craft to pen­e­trate with­out inter­fer­ence rests in part on tech­nol­ogy, car­ried on board mod­i­fied air­craft, that allowed spe­cial­ists to hack into Syrias net­worked air defense sys­tem, said U.S. mil­i­tary and indus­try offi­cials in the attacks aftermath.

Network raiders can con­duct their inva­sion from an air­craft into a net­work and then jump from net­work to net­work until they are into the tar­gets com­mu­ni­ca­tions loop. Whether the net­work is wire­less or wired doesnt mat­ter any­more, says a U.S. indus­try specialist. 

And it seems the Syrian gov­ern­ments self-​​imposed secrecy was partly to blame for the shut-​​down.

The raid on Syria was a strate­gic sig­nal, not a threat, says a retired senior mil­i­tary offi­cial who flew com­bat in the region for decades. This [raid] was about what we per­ceived are their capa­bil­i­ties [for devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion] and about deter­rence more than cre­at­ing damage.

He con­tends that Syrian pro­ce­dures even con­tributed to the suc­cess­ful bomb­ing raid.

Part of the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of the Syrian facil­ity was that they kept it so secret that there wer­ent enough air defenses assigned to it, the offi­cial contends. 

Be sure to read the rest of this fas­ci­nat­ing story and really kick ass report­ing HERE.

(Gouge: NC)

– Christian