The Jerusalem Post had an arti­cle recently on a secret elec­tronic jam­mer that can ren­der the Russian TOR-​​M1 and S300 anti-​​aircraft mis­siles useless.

If Russia goes through with the sale of its most advanced anti-​​aircraft mis­sile sys­tem to Iran, Israel will use an elec­tronic war­fare device now under devel­op­ment to neu­tral­ize it and as a result present Russia as vul­ner­a­ble to air infil­tra­tions, a top defense offi­cial has told The Jerusalem Post. 

The Russian sys­tem, called the S-​​300, is one of the most advanced multi-​​target anti-​​aircraft-​​missile sys­tems in the world today and has a reported abil­ity to track up to 100 tar­gets simul­ta­ne­ously while engag­ing up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilo­me­ters and can hit tar­gets at alti­tudes of 27,000 meters. 

While Russia has denied that it sold the sys­tem to Iran, Teheran claimed last year that Moscow was prepar­ing to equip the Islamic Republic with S-​​300 sys­tems. Iran already has TOR-​​M1 surface-​​to-​​air mis­siles from Russia… 

…A top IAF offi­cer also said this week that Israel needed to do “every­thing pos­si­ble” to pre­vent the S-​​300 from reach­ing the region. 

“Russia will have to think real hard before deliv­er­ing this sys­tem to Iran, which is pos­si­bly on the brink of con­flict with either Israel or the US, since if the sys­tem is deliv­ered, an EW [elec­tronic war­fare] sys­tem will likely be devel­oped to neu­tral­ize it, and if that hap­pens it would be cat­a­strophic not only for Iran but also for Russia,” the defense offi­cial said. 

Neutralization of one of the main com­po­nents of Russian air defense would be a blow to Russian national secu­rity as well as to defense exports. “No coun­try will want to buy the sys­tem if it is proven to be inef­fec­tive,” the offi­cial said. “For these rea­sons, Russia may not deliver it in the end to Iran.”

(more…)

From Aviation Week’s Ares weblog and posted at Military​.com.

Israeli com­pany Planum Vision is push­ing a new type of fixed-​​route UAV that relies on an elec­tric train cable line. As is the ten­dency of smaller com­pa­nies these days, Planum Vision is using YouTube to get the word out. The word being that a fixed-​​route, train cable UAV, or TCUAV, is ideal for bor­der patrol and pro­tec­tion of mil­i­tary bases by cre­at­ing an auto­mated sur­veil­lance that elim­i­nates the fail­ures asso­ci­ated with flight con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and human error.

TCUAV would also be use­ful in pro­tect­ing oil pipelines, energy facil­i­ties and ports and other trans­porta­tion hubs, accord­ing to the com­pany. It’s not clear the com­pany has any con­tracts or part­ners yet, although a related patent appli­ca­tion was filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization late last week.

– Christian

Israel used sev­eral new intelligence-​​gathering and strike tech­nolo­gies in its raid on Syria. New details of the attack involve a train of capa­bil­i­ties extend­ing from satel­lite obser­va­tions to pre­ci­sion bomb­ing of the sus­pect facil­ity on Sept. 6.

The launch of a new satel­lite this sum­mer allowed the inte­gra­tion of sev­eral advanced tech­nolo­gies includ­ing electro-​​optical imag­ing from space, image-​​enhancing algo­rithms, scene-​​matching guid­ance for pre­ci­sion weapons and the use of advanced tar­get­ing pods car­ried by the Israeli Air Force’s two-​​man F-​​16Is (the pods are not avail­able on F-​​15Is).

In a series of inter­views, sev­eral spe­cial­ists detailed the tech­nolo­gies and how they were used. “Reality is more impres­sive than your imag­i­na­tion in some areas,“says a senior mil­i­tary officer.

Space obser­va­tions pro­vided early plan­ning details for the raid. The impor­tant satel­lite for the Syrian raid was Ofeq-​​7 launched on June 11th. It has multi-​​spectral and high res­o­lu­tion electro-​​optical sen­sors and a res­o­lu­tion of less than a half-​​meter, far bet­ter than that pro­vided by ear­lier Israeli satellites.

The space images were then improved by spe­cial­ized imagery enhance­ment algo­rithms to sharpen pic­tures for plan­ning pre­ci­sion bomb­ing attacks.

The pri­mary air­craft for the Syrian raid were some of the new, two-​​man Lockheed Martin F-​​16Is (Sufa or Storm) that Lockheed Martin began deliv­er­ing to the Israeli Air Force in Feb. 2004. The back­seater is a weapons sys­tems offi­cer who can focus on tar­get­ing and elec­tronic war­fare while the pilot focuses on fly­ing and evad­ing air defenses. Conformal fuel tanks give the fight­ers an unre­fu­eled com­bat radius of over 500 mi. which matches the unre­fu­eled range of F-​​15Is which would nor­mally escort a flight of strike aircraft.

Sensors on the $45 mil­lion F-​​16I include a APG-68(v)9 radar with high-​​resolution syn­thetic aper­ture radar map­ping capa­bil­ity and about 30% more range that other mechan­i­cally scanned radars.

But more impor­tantly for this raid, the fighter had the Litening tar­get­ing pod. Its EO imagery can be used for seeker cue­ing. That imagery can also be used for scene-​​matching with the obser­va­tions made by the satellite.

Read the entire Aviation Week arti­cle HERE.

– Christian

One of the sto­ries thats been intrigu­ing the heck out of me over the past cou­ple of weeks is that Israeli air strike into Syria. 

Just today, the most solid facts of the strike have leaked out, but Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are still pub­licly mum on the aer­ial attack that report­edly took out a nascent nuke capa­bil­ity deep in north­ern Syria.

The reports show that a North Korean ship docked at a Syrian port just a few days before the strike loaded with a ship­ment of cement (ya, right…). Heres what the reports are saying:

Unlike its destruc­tion of an Iraqi nuclear reac­tor in 1981, Israel made no announce­ment of the recent raid and imposed strict cen­sor­ship on report­ing by the Israeli media. Syria made only muted protests, and Arab lead­ers have remained silent. As a result, a dar­ing and appar­ently suc­cess­ful attack to elim­i­nate a poten­tial nuclear threat has been shrouded in mystery. 

“There is no ques­tion it was a major raid. It was an extremely impor­tant tar­get,” said Bruce Riedel, a for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cer at Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “It came at a time the Israelis were very con­cerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The deci­sion was taken despite their con­cerns it could pro­duce a war. That deci­sion reflects how impor­tant this tar­get was to Israeli mil­i­tary planners.“ 

Israel has long known about Syria’s inter­est in chem­i­cal and even bio­log­i­cal weapons, but “if Syria decided to go beyond that, Israel would think that was a real red line,” Riedel said. 

And some­thing else…

Some cur­rent and for­mer American offi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because infor­ma­tion about the raid remained clas­si­fied, said they believed that the site was involved in Syrias mis­sile pro­gram. They said that Israeli intel­li­gence offi­cials believed that they had evi­dence that the activ­ity at the site involved North Korean engi­neers believed to work in the nuclear program. 

So far, sev­eral cur­rent and for­mer American offi­cials who have been involved in eval­u­at­ing the Israeli claims say they are not yet con­vinced of a nuclear con­nec­tion. Yet the enor­mous secrecy around the find­ings, both here and in Israel, sug­gests that the activ­ity that prompted the Israeli attack involved more than a run-​​of-​​the-​​mill mis­sile trans­ac­tion, one offi­cial said, not­ing that the Israelis took con­sid­er­able risks in car­ry­ing out the attack. 

Actually, I also won­der whether the Syrians would take such a huge risk, though pres­sure from their Iranian task mas­ters could have out­weighed the sui­ci­dal nature of this poten­tial program. 

But whats most intrigu­ing about the strike is what it says about Syrias air defense sys­tem. Some claim that the Syrians have one of the most advanced SAM and radar-​​tracking archi­tec­tures man­u­fac­tured in Russia the same one used to pro­tect Tehran called the Pantsyr. Apparently the unstealthy F-​​15I Israeli air­craft were able to make it into Syria with­out being shot out of the sky, and some reports indi­cate that they snuck their way out through Turkey either with per­mis­sion or without. 

Ive heard that the jam­ming of the Syrian air defenses was so severe that it shut down civil­ian comms inside Lebanon for the bet­ter part of a day. Pretty impres­sive; and that could be why Iran has been largely silent on the mat­ter it would tip their hand that they are as vul­ner­a­ble as the Syrians.

(more…)

So it seems the Israeli army is dump­ing the M4 and jump­ing on the bullpup design band­wagon, field­ing a new Tavor-​​built TAR-​​21 assault rifle to its troops that looks more like the Austrian Steyr and British Enfield L85 rifle.

This is sig­nif­i­cant because the Israeli mil­i­tary is one of the only other mod­ern armies in the world that has fielded the M4 as widely as the United States. Its unclear whether the Israelis are chang­ing their weapons because of the M4s noto­ri­ous jam­ming prob­lems, or if they were just look­ing to update their assault rifle with inte­grated red-​​dot/​laser sight­ing and shorten the rifle which a bullpup design lets you do because the bar­rel and receiver is essen­tially in the butt stock.

But check­ing out the video, it looks like a pretty good piece of gear to me.

Headshots at 300 yards with a bullpup? The shooter may have been a for­mer sniper, but thats still a tough shot to make stand­ing up with such a short weapon.

(Gouge: WaZinn)

– Christian

One of the biggest con­cerns about high-​​tech, so-​​called “network-​​centric” war­fare was that it would lure com­man­ders into con­duct­ing push-​​button wars — direct­ing action from their wired hub in the rear, while their troops were fight­ing in the front.
“In Lebanon, Israels first dig­i­tized ground war,” Defense News’ Barbara Opall-​​Rome reports, those fears appear to have been real­ized. “After-​​action probes found egre­gious cases where com­man­ders relied on [sen­sor feeds] instead of mov­ing for­ward to assess crit­i­cal points in the evolv­ing battle.”

This war under­scored the lim­i­ta­tions of plasma, espe­cially when it is accorded dis­pro­por­tion­ate pri­or­ity over train­ing and dis­ci­pline, said Matan Vilnai, a retired major gen­eral and for­mer Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff, now a promi­nent mem­ber of Israels Labor Party.
In post-​​Lebanon War Israel, plasma has become deri­sive short­hand for the vir­tual com­mand and con­trol pro­vided through net­worked oper­a­tions…
Examples of such dan­gers were found in the wartime func­tion­ing of two crit­i­cal divi­sions, where both brigadier gen­er­als were assailed for lack of hands-​​on con­tact with forces under their com­mand.
In the case of IDF 162 Division, the com­man­der man­aged the entire war from deep inside home ter­ri­tory, ven­tur­ing only twice and for very brief peri­ods beyond the Lebanese bor­der. Whether by sheer mis­for­tune or as a direct result of the hands-​​off com­mand style, the 162 Divisions 401 Armored Brigade and Nahal Infantry Brigade were involved in one of the wars biggest blun­ders, which claimed the lives of 12 Israeli soldiers.

One of our insider cor­re­spon­dents points out this AP pho­to­graph from Lebanon and raises a red flag:

I am not say­ing the descrip­tion is false, but I spent 20 years in the Air Force, much of that time doing tar­get­ing and mis­sion plan­ning for air­crews which involved a lot of post-​​strike analy­sis. This is by far, the lease [sic] amount of dam­age from an “air strike” I have ever seen. Even a Hellfire mis­sile does more dam­age than this, remem­ber the Predator strike on the car of some Al Qaeda oper­a­tives some time back? Total destruc­tion of a soft vehi­cle like this. The only dam­age, other than minor body dam­age, I see is a miss­ing sun roof. Thought you might want to add it to your list of pos­si­ble fakes.

While incon­sis­tent with the effects of large muni­tions such as satel­lite– and laser-​​guided bombs and even, yes, Hellfire mis­siles, this dam­age might rep­re­sent a lucky hit by a helicopter-​​fired unguided rocket or a clus­ter bomb … or some­thing far more sophis­ti­cated.
Consider: The U.S. Air Force since the late 1990s has had a weapon that dis­perses guided sub­mu­ni­tions (each pack­ing the punch of a hand grenade), each bomb capa­ble of tak­ing out a com­pany of tanks. It’s called the Sensor Fuzed Weapon. Globalsecurity​.org explains:

The Sensor Fuzed Weapon [SFW] is an unpow­ered, top attack, wide area, clus­ter muni­tion, designed to achieve mul­ti­ple kills per air­craft pass against enemy armor and sup­port vehi­cles. After release, the TMD opens and dis­penses the ten sub­mu­ni­tions which are para­chute sta­bi­lized. Each of the 10 BLU-​​108/​B sub­mu­ni­tions con­tains four armor-​​penetrating pro­jec­tiles with infrared sen­sors to detect armored targets.

Defense Industry Daily appro­pri­ately calls the SFW “cans of whup-​​ass”.
Israel is a known con­sumer of American Joint Direct Attack Munitions and a pro­ducer of laser-​​guided bombs. Has it got­ten into the SFW game too, either with American weapons or its own sim­i­lar design?
If so, I’m not sur­prised they’ve kept it under wraps. This is a clus­ter bomb we’re talk­ing about, the kind of weapon noto­ri­ous for acci­den­tally tak­ing out civil­ians who might be milling around the bat­tle­field.
–David Axe
UPDATED, 8/​11/​06: A source from inside the avi­a­tion indus­try says the mys­tery muni­tion might be a Viper Strike.