The deadly drones
SpaceWar reports that the arms convoy bound for Egypt, then Gaza, which was destroyed by a “major power” in the Sudanese desert was attacked by Israeli UCAVs.
Israel used unmanned drones to attack clandestine Iranian convoys in Sudan that were attempting to smuggle rockets into Gaza, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported. The paper said that western diplomats confirmed that Israel attacked the Iranian truck convoys in late January and the first week of February in the remote Sudan desert, just outside the Red Sea town of Port Sudan. … It quoted defence sources as saying the convoys were carrying Fajr-3 rockets, which have a range of more than 40 miles (65 kilometres), and were split into sections to be smuggled through tunnels into Gaza from Egypt. …
“They built the Fajr in parts so it would be easy to smuggle them into Gaza, then reassemble them with Hamas experts who learnt the job in Syria and Iran,” a source told the paper. The main reason for using drones instead of manned aircraft to attack was that a convoy forms a “slippery” target, a source said.
“When you attack a fixed target, especially a big one, you are better off using jet aircraft. But with a moving target with no definite time for the move UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are best, as they can hover extremely high and remain unseen until the target is on the move,” the source said.
The 65 km version is the Fajr 5, which was used by Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war. It is normally fired from a truck chassis, but the missile itself is about a foot wide, about 21 feet long and weighs half a ton. “The Fajr-5 is a 6.6m long solid fuel rocket with a diameter of .33m and a weight of 915kg. It carries a 90kg warhead to a distance of 75km. Both the Fajr-3 and -5 are produced under the auspices of the Aerospace Industries Organization.” Broken it up, it might conceivably be moved by narrow gauge rail through a tunnel.
One can only speculate about the airframes Israel might have used in the attack. Certainly the Eitan long range surveillance vehicle may have played its part in following the convey. “Weighing over four tons, Heron TP – also dubbed Heron 2 or “Eitan”, by its Israeli Air Force (IAF) designation – is designed to fly at high altitude on missions spanning over several days.” For the attack itself, the Elbit Hermes 450 may have played a role. “The Israeli Air Force, which operates a squadron of Hermes 450s out of Palmachim Airbase south of Tel Aviv, has adapted the Hermes 450 for use as an assault UAV, reportedly equipping it with two Hellfire missiles or, according to various sources, two Rafael-made missiles. According to Israeli, Palestinian, Lebanese and independent reports, the Israeli assault UAV has seen extensive service in the Gaza Strip and was used intensively in the Second Lebanon War as well as in the 2009 Sudan air raids Israel has not denied this capability, but to date, its policy has been not to officially confirm it either.”
Incidentally, the use of UAVs highlight once again the vital importance of long range communications, space control and bandwidth dominance in warfare. Those capabilities are ultimately dominated by the United States. Thus, the good graces of the Obama administration are hugely important to Israel if it is to maintain its dominance. In order to defend itself against the threat of missiles from Gaza or other places, Israel must play ball with the USA.
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Tip Jar
Seems to me this attack also sent a very clear message to the Iranians vis a vis their nuclear program. Namely,
“We’ve just shown you one thing we can do. However, we haven’t shown you EVERYTHING we can do. Farshteyn, khevre?”
If there were 17 trucks and these UAVs carry 2 hellfire missiles each the math requires a minimum of 9 UAVs for the mission. Seems unlikely. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more UAVs were used for surveillance but for the attack I would expect manned warplanes.
I don’t imagine that the Iranians will be stopping their smuggling and I don’t expect the Israelis will be stopping their interdictions.
Wonder if the Israeli UAV controller, observing his handiwork with satisfaction, signed off with, “Roger dodger, you old Fajr.”
Walt:
Those who smuggle the Fajr
Will never live
To be an old codger.
Single US Reaper UAV can carry 14 hellfires.
MarcJ, right,but the US were aware of it
http://www.drzz.info/article-29597966-6.html
Wretchard, Command and Control can be effectively ended by Iran or Pakistan as well as China or Russia by launching anti-satellite weapons. Basically if you can put a satellite in orbit you can kill any other satellite, and you also have essentially the same technology that can be adapted to global ICBMs.
Obama, being profoundly stupid in all things military, wants to throw away this advantage.
However, there ARE short term means to get around satellites, if you don’t have your own or they are compromised or dead.
One way is to use chained Air Command airframes, this is dangerous, they are big fat targets, and you have limited not global ability to reach out and touch someone, but it can be done. There are also high altitude drones which can provide comms on a limited basis, say two to three days.
It may well have been that Israel did this sort of technique anyway, not trusting an Obama Administration to sell them out. It would certainly have been wise.
test
my #6 is awaiting to be edited
info du cru
I have always admired the Israelis ability to make lemonade out of lemons. They live in a region where their neighbors are prone to the wildest fantasies. Realizing that they could not undo that condition they have capitalized on it. The “arab street” might be mythical itself but it believes deeply in Israeli super powers. Judicious feeding of their paranoia has them believing in Israeli master spies everywhere and that the “Drones” to be feared are either invincible jewish robots or the result of secret rays that will turn arabs into asexual drones. Maybe the Israelis can convince them to be on the watch not just for Drones but for Killer Bees.
The imbed did not work. I’ve been droned.
The Killer Bees
Can drones be dropped from another aircraft at high altitude to glide for long distances? If they can carry a multitude of Hellfire missiles they can surely carry at least one tactical nuke. Iran might not be as safe as they believe they are.
“Standoff” ordnance can glide a dumb bomb 10 miles, with a little propulsion much further, and of course cruise missiles can go 1,000 miles or more.
LOTM @11
I think they are now not so much worried about killer bees as about killer Bibis.
Eitans could have provided target designation for LORA surface attack missiles positioned on maritime platforms in the Red Sea
Walt…
Spot on!
Walt
I think they are now not so much worried about killer bees as about killer Bibis.
Geart sentiment. Git ‘er done Bibi.
– One Roadblock Too Many for G.M. –
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S stunning decision to demand that Rick Wagoner resign as chairman and chief executive of General Motors was based on the wrong set of premises and raises the prospect that the administration will intervene too deeply in the automaker, seriously jeopardizing a transformation effort that has come a long way in the right direction.
Read the whole thing, it’s devastating.
“Mr. Obama has not only failed to understand these contributions, he has also deprived G.M. of Mr. Wagoner’s presence on the board. Much of Mr. Wagoner’s knowledge and experience could simply be lost. With Mr. Lutz also about to retire, the two executives most responsible for G.M.’s transformation are gone.”
—
Lutz is one of the most knowledgeable in the business.
– Workers say Obama treated autos worse than Wall St –
Autoworkers say Obama’s ‘tough love’ more tough than love
DETROIT (AP)
— Many assembly line autoworkers reacted with skepticism and anger Monday to the Obama administration’s tough tactics, which stoked long-simmering feelings that the people who put the country on wheels get treated differently than the wizards of Wall Street.
“But when it comes to auto manufacturing and middle-class jobs and people that don’t matter on Wall Street, there are certainly different standards that we have to meet — higher standards — than the financials. That is a double standard that exists and it’s unfair,” Fredline said.
“We knew someone was going to have to take the proverbial `bullet,’ and it would have made it a lot easier to accept that had the CEOs of the banks also been required to give up their jobs,” said Jim Graham, president of a union local in Lordstown, Ohio, where GM produces the Cobalt and Pontiac G5 fuel-efficient cars.
Wretchard,
Israel does need to play ball with the U.S., but I think the issues are a little more complex. Israel does have its own satellites. They are not as good as ours, but there is still a lot of good information they can get along with the communications service that satellites provide.
Geography is where the U.S. can impede or assist or at least decide not to impede. An air strike (assuming that sub-launched missiles are insufficient) means going over Turkey, Iraq or Saudi Arabia or going the long way around Saudi Arabia and back. For going over Iraq, that is essentially U.S. airspace and requires U.S. permission to avoid accidental shootdowns. The other routes over land requires a stroke of luck and interest for Israeli diplomacy and for the U.S. either not to find out or not to stop it if we do (and I could see Obama doing the latter).
And Iran is likely to treat any attack by Israel or the U.S. as one and the same, which can lead to accusations of dragging the U.S. into a war if Iran targets our troops to a greater extent than before. Even the accusation alone by this administration would be ugly.
DebkaFile, usually a good source on matters like these, doesn’t think Israel was involved. See http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1382
IIRC we have returned the airspace above 28,000 feet to Iraqi sovereign control.
So if anyone squawks like a commercial flight — no intercept would be attempted.
Things happen, you know…
Despite various attempts to use low earth orbit satellites for communications, the vast majority of space communications goes through geosynchronous birds. They are very very hard to intercept. It would take days to get there and would be obvious to everyone what was going on.
GPS satellites are a little easier to get to but there are so many of them that you would have to take out a number to affect anything.
Controlling a UAV from a low altitude comsat would be a real challenge, to say the least. Most such comsats, such as some the Soviets used to use, use a store and dump approach. That would be like trying to control a UAV by mailing a letter to the factory that built it. Iridium and Orbcom do use a relay system for real time communications, but I don’t think anyone would try to use them for direct control of anything.
Spoofing or jamming UAV communications from orbit is a real possibility. But the fact that you can sit down in a fast food restaurant and access the internet wirelessly shows that is an problem that can be solved with current technology.
I think that one of space technology’s more unexpected military contributions is the impact on attitudes. The idea that you could have a machine being controlled remotely at some significant distance was alien to the air forces of the world until relatively recently. For satellites that is the normal way of doing business. I think the fact finally sunk in – or maybe we just had enough old pilots retire – and that, combined with genuine saellte recon, comm, and GPS as well as computer technology led to the modern UAV.
But we could have been doing this sort of thing to some extent in, say, 1946. And we were, but only experimentally, and most were expendable. Imagine if we had UAVs for the Bridges at Toko Ri, the U2 flights, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc…. And we did not because of attitudes, more than anything else.
Time magazine’s web site has an article on this alleged attack, How Israel Foiled an Arms Convoy Bound for Hamas. They claim dozens of aircraft were used, including F16, F15 and drones for damage assessments.
RWE,
It’s more than attitudes; being there requires better sensory inputs than black and white TV. I think this is still the reason we’ll need humans in the seat for most missions in the near future.
Though there’s a UAV advantage in long term observation, where sensors could wake the drone pilot up when something intersting happens after hours of nothing happening. This seems to be most applicable to desolete places like Afgh.