The Philadelphi Story
What can be brought into Gaza? “Import of goods into the Gaza Strip is limited as part of the 2007–present blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel and Egypt. Israel allows limited humanitarian supplies from aid organizations into the Gaza Strip. Humanitarian organizations, including UN agencies, bring goods into Gaza. As of May 2010, they have brought in, according to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories of the Israel Defense Forces, 1.5 million liters of diesel fuel and gasoline, fruits and vegetables, wheat, sugar, meat, chicken and fish products, dairy products, animal feed, hygiene products, clothing and shoes.”
Other stuffs are brought in by tunnel.
Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels are smuggling tunnels that have been dug under the Egypt-Gaza Strip separation barrier which separates Egypt from the Gaza Strip. The barrier runs along the international border along the Philadelphi corridor, which is a buffer zone along the border created by the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. …
The tunnels are run as businesses, mainly by the Abu Samhadana and Abu Rish families, both of Bedouin origin. Smuggling provides tens of thousands of US dollars in profits for each delivery. Some sources have also reported financial links to the Arafat family. Some of the tunnels were allegedly controlled by one of the Palestinian Authority security services under the command of Moussa Arafat, cousin of Yasser Arafat. Until his assassination at the hands of a rival Palestinian faction in 2005, Moussa Arafat was believed to receive a portion of the profits derived from the smuggling tunnels.
2010 estimates say that approximately 7,000 people work on over 1,000 tunnels. The tunnels are reportedly of a generally high quality of engineering and construction—with some including electricity, ventilation, intercoms, and a rail system. The openings to many tunnels are found within buildings in or around Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
Thus is can be readily understood that rocket fire from Gaza can neither be wholly suppressed by airstrikes nor even by a ground operation unless Gaza itself is limited or Hamas decides to stop firing rockets.
The premier weapons system employed by Hamas is Fajr-5 rocket, probably supplied by Iran. “With its 75 km (46 mile) range and a 175 kg (385 pound) warhead – powerful enough to shear through a concrete apartment block – the Fajr is a prestige weapon for Hamas.
Bill Clinton remarked “[I]t’s only a question of time until [these rockets] are de facto outfitted with GPS positioning systems. And when that happens and the casualty rates start to really mount, will that make it more difficult for the Palestinians to make peace instead of less?” His argument is simple. Surrender now while the surrendering is good.
The other option Israel has of course, is simply to cut off Gaza by severing the link to Egypt. But Clinton didn’t mention that. The assumption that there is “no military solution to the Gaza problem” is not quite correct. The more accurate formulation is that “there is no military solution within the current international diplomatic framework.” Redraw the map and solution to Gaza appears immediately. This is exactly what happened to the German 6th Army in 1942. The ‘clean’ military solution to an city fortress is simply to cut it off.
But more to the point the same unthinkable fate was handed to the Egyptian 3rd Army in 1973 by the IDF. With national survival at stake the Israelis thought “outside of the box” in 1973 and crossed the Suez canal, trapping the entire Egyptian army on the other side by cutting them off from the rear. It would be the equivalent of Rommel invading England and leaving the US expeditionary force stuck in France with the Channel behind them. Interestingly enough the Israelis violated the UN ceasefire to complete the encirclement. IDF units kept going until all of the Egyptian forces were completely trapped.
The weakness in assuming that the diplomatic framework is inviolable is that faced with an supreme danger to their populations, history shows that nations tear up diplomatic arrangements and rearrange the map. What Clinton should have realized is that if diplomats want to preserve the existing arrangements they must never allow the combatants to push too far and pose an existential threat to each other. Otherwise all the bets are off.
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The Economist now calls China a “National Socialist Nation”-
We have Panetta in Australia-today- and a very significant new US Marine base there in Australia
We have POTUS and Clinton in Asia
What about the other nations in the First, Second and Third Island Chains?
That is the main event for the USN moving forward in our pivot to Asia
What are Fernandez insights into this new reality involving his birth home and his adopted country-Australia
The Mid East/ Palestine-Israel is now boring, irrelevant and history
A Sunk Cost-in terms of American Fundamental Interests
The hot areas now are the Western Pacific-Australia in particular
Fernandez lives there
What are your views and insights about these critical issues of fundamental American interests and of survival Australian interests-moving forward ?
We would value your perspective on Australian, Western Pacific political and military dynamics.
The Economist calls China a ” National Socialist Economy”-
- then you and your country of birth and Australia could be in very serious trouble–soon.
Australia is in far greater danger from Gillard and the Labour party than she will ever be from China. China only wants to dominate Australia, they don’t want to utterly destroy it.
Wretchard quoted Bill Clinton:
“[I]t’s only a question of time until [these rockets] are de facto outfitted with GPS positioning systems. And when that happens and the casualty rates start to really mount, will that make it more difficult for the Palestinians to make peace instead of less?”
The most sophisticated rocket that Hamas is currently using against Israel is the Iranian made Fajr-5. This is an “artillery rocket” with no guidance system. The Fajr-5 is probably based upon a seamless steel tube with a steel nozzle and filled with a crude propellant like asphalt mixed with potassium perchlorate. The Palestinians could probably make these rockets themselves with a decent machine shop, i.e. lathes with a 2 foot swing. Hamas is probably using the Iranian version because the Iranians are giving Hamas the rockets for free. My guess is the rockets cost the Iranians about $700/each. The Israelis are currently blunting most of the damage caused by these rockets with their “iron dome”. Iron dome is a nice piece of technology. Each missile of the iron dome is sophisticated and actively guided. Consequently these iron dome missiles are expensive. I read somewhere that each iron dome missile costs about $30,000/each. Key point here is the Palestinians/Iranians can shoot 50 Fajr-5 missiles for the cost of one iron dome interceptor missile. My guess is that 50 Fajr-5 missiles simultaneously shot at one target could easily saturate even a perfectly designed anti-missile system. Given this mathematics, the last thing that Hamas would want to do is replace the Fajr-5 with a more sophisticate/expensive weapon. Hamas’ best tactic is to shoot lots of Fajr-5s and saturate Israel’s iron dome defense. Israel’s response is obvious. They have to invade Palestinian territory with infantry where ever the missiles are being launched and destroy the missiles while they are still on the ground. Also the Israelis need to find the Palestinian machine shops where the missiles are being made and destroy the machine shops. Finally the line of supply from Iran will also have to be interdicted. In the process, the Israelis have to inflict sufficient pain upon the Palestinian people that any benefit they feel from attacking Israel is overwhelmed by their own suffering. Ultimately this is an exercise in “economics”.
Wretchard said:
“But more to the point the same unthinkable fate was handed to the Egyptian 3rd Army in 1973 by the IDF. With national survival at stake the Israelis thought “outside of the box” in 1973 and crossed the Suez canal, trapping the entire Egyptian army on the other side by cutting them off from the rear. ”
And after the Egyptian 3rd Army was surrounded, the Soviets immediately deployed in Egypt, Scud missiles with nuclear warhead markings on the reentry vehicles. The US detected the Scud missiles with SR-71 overflights. Whether the reentry vehicles were really nukes is another question (the Soviets might have been bluffing). The Israelis were forced by Soviet intervention and US insistence to back down and not annihilate the Egyptian 3rd Army. Thus we have a classic example of how a Middle Eastern war might have gone nuclear.
The most recent several posts are all variations of The Three Conjectures. How far can you push a person or a nation before that person or nation throws political correctness aside and does whatever it needs to do to preserve itself? Another way of looking at it is, how many compromises can a person or nation indulge before it loses its ability to protect and preserve its own survival? And how large is the window between these two? That is what a clear and accurate red line is supposed to identify. Take action in 1939 or suffer great losses that take until 1945 to stop.
When the red lines are misdrawn or out of denial not seen, then we get either more destruction than we would otherwise have needed, or we enter a new dark age. I suppose in the end entropy always wins, as all life eventually does die.
China wants food, energy and land
Australia is a very attractive target
The Economist calls China the only successful National Socialist System-they may be correct
The First Island Chain will be Taiwan
The Second Island Chain is Japan
The Third Island Chain is Australia and Hawaii
Gates said that the US fight will be the First Island Chain
That is the next war-unless we arrive at a diplomatic solution
Please don’t let Bill Clinton say “we will have peace in our time”. I still have things I want to accomplish.
w – it’s been twice in 2 days that your filter ate my homework.
I recall the Israeli military invading Gaza in an effort to remove Israeli settlers. I was aghast at what I was seeing. How Israel could ever hope to protect itself with this corridor of death present was beyond my comprehension. Our recent elections have not relieved my confusion.
In the book “A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath”, the author described the effects of a B52 strike on those VC sheltered in tunnels. It was physically and psychologically devastating experience. I believe that Israel has been using bunker busters to collapse the tunnels that run between the Sinai and Gaza and would suspect the same, albeit with fewer targets.
Israel must take complete and irrevocable control of the Gaza if there is to be any hope at all of peace and security. In the mean time, bunker busters at the southwestern end of Gaza may prove helpful.
I believe that my recommendations still honor the Westphalian philosophy.
On paper it’s apparent to everyone that Iron Dome can be super-saturated with dumb missiles.
However, Hamas cannot repeat the Stalin Organ tactic of racking up rocket launchers; which are prone to secondary explosions worse than a petrochemical complex.
The Clenis is wrong about GPS, too. He must be a LOT dumber than I thought. To achieve targeting control you need a host of control surfaces — which must tolerate stresses way, way beyond that of a hobbyist’s radio controlled plane.
As the V-2/A-4 demonstrated, long range ballistic missiles with primitive warheads are losers. They can only function as propaganda and harassment fires.
==========
Eggplant: Nixon went to DEFCON 2 because the Soviets were mobilizing their parachute divisions. Rockets had nothing to do with it.
Moscow informed Washington that they were going to bail out the Egyptian Army with their parachute divisions (five available) — which were loading up on the runway at that time — so noted by overhead assets. Nixon was invited to send American parachute troops, too — in effect replacing both ‘proxies’ on the battlefield. (!) Nixon thought the notion was absolutely nuts.
He responded by lifting DEFCON 4 two bumps — taking it back to the Cuban Crisis level. Nixon even had the gyros spooling up under DEFCON 2. (!)
I ran into an Air Force non-com who was a ‘family counselor’ at Minot SAC base at the time. He said that the base’s perimeter patrol caught an astonishing number of air men fleeing the base — heading for Canada, forty-miles distant. (!)
This morale fiasco was suppressed entirely.
Nerves were so stressed that the men either couldn’t stop eating or couldn’t eat. Take your pick. Just as in the movie, Dr. Strangelove, outside communication was shut off. This, more than any other factor, had the fly-boys going nuts.
It worked both ways. The farmer neighbors had no idea that the ‘nuclear community’ was on edge. As a general American citizen, I was led to believe that Nixon had merely bumped up our readiness.
Though it was not stated, DEFCON 2 surely meant that Nixon, himself, was on the edge of flying out of Washington — if the Soviets didn’t back off.
This was the second big climb down for the Soviets — this time, without any compensating benefits like having a warm water client for life.
To sum up: the nukes that were flashed were ours — and it was a direct confrontation between the superpowers, without the big presser that Kennedy used.
Moscow rightly feared that Nixon may have wanted to end his days, Sampson style. They backed off.
Gaza and the Sinai, soon to be a target rich environment full of Jihadi’s and inbreeds of every stripe.
Turkey, soon to be Baja Kurdistan.
If Israel stops the provision of food water goods and even concrete and building supplies, that are used to build the tunnels, through the crossing under their control then the Egyptians would have to allow those supplies to enter through a crossing under Egyptian control. This would achieve three things.
First it would put the lie to the meme that Israel surrounds poor little Gaza and replace it with the more correct perspective that Gaza is as it always was an intrusion of Egypt into Israel.
Second it would break the myth that Gaza is naturally affiliated with the West Bank as part of one potential Palestinian state polity to be connected by a corridor that would divide Israel.
Third it would force the tunnels to divert their capacity from the delivery of weapons and luxury goods to necessities. As it is now the Israelis are subsidizing the tunnel operators in the high margin goods shipping business.
According to reports, Bill Clinton left much to be desired as a taxi driver, and we can conclude he is far worse as a rocket scientist.
Aside from the difficulties involved in installing GPS guidance in a unguided artillery rocket (admittedly, if they made the warheads stage from the booster that would be a lot easier, if less valuable), I would think the IDF would pray that Hamas and Iran would expend their resources in such a fashion.
Such guidance systems will not be US military grade, and thus it will be easy to jam them or even “spoof” them and make the rockets fall some place harmless.
As for mass launches, the nature of the rockets will mean that they would all have to located in more or less the same area, and so will be rather obvious and very vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike. The Hamas practice of locating the launchers in schoolyards will be of no use in such a scenario; the school will cease to exist.
Airpower theory indicates that the best way to stop the rockets is to destroy the factory. Hamas has rocket factories in Gaza – they have on occasion blown themselves up without outside assistance. And the IDF can hit both those and the ones in Iran, although the ones in Iran would require Jericho and nukes, not F-16′s.
But note that this latest series of attacks is really all about Syria. Iran’s client state is slipping away, and the Mad Mullahs have decided to fight to the last Palestinian.
rwe @ 12: Airpower theory indicates that the best way to stop the rockets is to destroy the factory.
Airpower theory indicates that the best way to stop the rockets is have the Soviet army enter Berlin killing everything they meet upon the way.
You don’t stop the rockets by bombing the rockets, you stop the rockets by killing the people.
Contrapositively, if you don’t kill the people, you don’t stop the rockets.
A more cost effective defense against dumb rockets would be the Phalanx installed close to the border to destroy the rockets in the boost phase. Save Iron Dome for more sophisticated attacks from Hezbulla. The smuggler tunnels could be interdicted by a deep wide trench as long as necessary flooded with sea water. The best solution is to starve them until they emigrate to Egypt.
Victor is mocking me. Why does he want me angry? I am already quite angry about my girlfriend leaving me, which she had a right to do, but she should have explained things better and stop teasing me via chat messages.
We all hate Victor for his mean comments, but now I really despise him for trying to upset China issues. That’s exceedingly rude of him.
The World (political) prevents Israel from ever doing what needs to be done to stop what has, is and will keep happening to Israel, even at the physical end of Israel I am of extreme doubt their leaders have the chi to follow thru with the “Samson” option! Israel future is misery, forever, until Israel ceases to exist. Than the rest of the World will become Israel… I believe that the last President to have the nadz to use Nuclear weapons was our 40th, since than I don’t believe any Presidents after would give the authorization under any circumstances! Real WAR, Real HATE is unknown in America, completely replaced with a Civilized humanistic value, devoid of reality, absent TRUTH!
Eggplant – “Ultimately this is an exercise in “economics”.
Definitely; That is always what I considered the weakness of any missile defense system is the cost to benefit ratio of intercepting all of them versus being over saturated. The only system that has the potential of breaking the cost/benefit ratio is a direct energy system using coherent energy.
The last Charlie Foxtrot with Gaza had Israel cratering the tunnels using penetrating munitions. With the on again off again supply of “bunker busters” from the US I have little doubt that the Israelis have managed to develop their own. Their hardened airframe was essentially a howitzer tube from WWII and the rest is high g electronics and delay fuses. There is probably a clever way to fuse it without sophisticated electronics and all of these things are well within the expertise of the Israelis.
The bottom line is the recent foray into Syria to take out the nuclear facility required hardened munitions to take out the facility, major Hezbollah tunnels and bunkers were target in south Lebanon, the Gaza tunnels were pounded with penetrating munitions, and finally, any major action in Iran would require probably more similar munitions than Israel could deliver but they would still need quite a bit just to put a dent in Iran’s command and control. Israel needs lot and lots of bunker busters and the US has only sold them around 50-100 max as far as I know.
16.Chuck, “Real HATE is unknown in America…”
You obviously do not drive on American highways.
What worries me most in the current global theater is the Israelis basing their decisions in part on who is in the White House. From an administration standpoint, they stand alone.
Katana #14:
The Phalanx has an maximum effective range of 1640 yards. If they were launching that close to the border you could use Josh’s recommended approach and just shoot the Hamas people with the M-61 as they were getting ready to fire.
Me, I would still prefer using MLRS for that role; it’s good to 20 miles and the collateral damage is nicer.
Blert #9:
To the best of my knowledge, all the USAF ICBMs operationally deployed in 1973 and on alert had their gyros spun up all the time. That was not true of the Atlas and Thor missiles but they were long gone from the missile role by that time. I know that the Delco Carrosel system used on Titan II was left on, and I think that it had been introduced by that time; not sure about its predecssor.
Baobo #15:
You need to realize that the only reason anyone posts anything on this website is to irritate you. Except for Victor, who is trying to irriate everyone.
Have you read Eric Hoffer’s THE TRUE BELIEVER: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (highly recommended by Dwight D. Eisenhower)?
A brilliant free spirit who worked as a stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s-1960s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical books in his spare time while living in the railroad yards.
Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Re the Democrat Party as Santa Claus: Hoffer says, “One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress. . . .
“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for. . . .
“A substitute [cause] embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget.”
Chapter titles: THE APPEAL OF MASS MOVEMENTS: The Desire for Change; The Desire for Substitutes; The Interchangeability of Mass Movements
THE POTENTIAL CONVERTS: The Role of the Undesirables in Human Affairs; The Poor — Newly Poor, Abjectly Poor, Free Poor, Creative Poor, & Unified Poor; Misfits; The Inordinately Selfish; The Ambitious Facing Unlimited Opportunities; Minorities; The Bored[!]; The Sinners
UNITED ACTION AND SELF-SACRIFICE: Factors Promoting Self-Sacrifice — Identification with a Collective Whole, Make-Believe, Deprecation of the Present, “Things Which Are Not,” Doctrine, Fanaticism, Mass Movements and Armies
Unifying Agents — Hatred, Imitation, Persuasion and Coercion, Leadership, Action, Suspicion, The Effects of Unification
BEGINNING AND END: Men of Words; The Fanatics; The Practical Men of Action; Good and Bad Mass Movements;
The Unattractiveness and Sterility of the Active Phase; Some Factors Which Determine the Length of the Active Phase; Useful Mass Movements
Clear, brief, and dense with insights. You lot would find this book greatly stimulating of thought — he illuminates many of the mysteries we’ve wrestled with here, especially the psychology of our opponents. In fact, as I’m reading it, I’m seeing with new clarity why we lost this round.
blert @ 9 said:
“As the V-2/A-4 demonstrated, long range ballistic missiles with primitive warheads are losers. They can only function as propaganda and harassment fires.”
This observation is certainly true for liquid fueled actively guided ballistic missiles but not correct in the case of unguided solid fuel rockets. The effective use of the Katyusha rocket (Stalin’s Organ Pipes) in the Battle of Berlin is the correct historical example. On this topic: I have always wondered why the Iranians and Iraqis used Scud missiles against each other in the so called “Battle of the Cities” during the Iran-Iraq War. The Scuds were typically more expensive than the targets being destroyed (sort of like using gold instead of lead for bullets). Scuds make sense only if they carry a nuke or chemical warhead. I believe Hamas’ strategic objective with their primitive solid rocket bombardment was simply to make life miserable for the Israelis, i.e. shoot a couple rockets every week simply to force Israel’s population to stay hunkered down. The critical consideration for Hamas was to limit the level of bombardment to a point that it was harassing but not trigger an all out Israeli response. However Hamas has unwisely escalated their level of bombardment triggering an Israeli response. This tells me that Iran has pulled Hamas by the tail and told them to up their rate of bombardment to a level that was imprudent. This in turn confirms what RWE@12 mentioned that this is really all about Syria with Iran doing what it can to help their clients in Damascus. The Israelis are no fools and must see this. What will be their response?
Also I don’t think a Phalanx type system would be effective against terrorists shooting off solid fuel rockets willy-nilly. The best response is to send infantry into Gaza and destroy the rockets while they are on the ground. Whether this would be strategically wise in the context of Iran is another question.
b @ 20: Have you read Eric Hoffer
Lady we could use a man like Eric Hoffer again!
… but since nobody even reads anymore, what good would it do?
Maybe a Hofferbot app on people’s smart phones would help?
e @ 21: On this topic: I have always wondered why the Iranians and Iraqis used Scud missiles against each other in the so called “Battle of the Cities” during the Iran-Iraq War. The Scuds were typically more expensive than the targets being destroyed (sort of like using gold instead of lead for bullets). Scuds make sense only if they carry a nuke or chemical warhead.
I think it’s pretty much the same reason Mexican gardeners insist on using leaf blowers gardening in LA where there are generally few leaves to blow, and it’s pretty much the same reason the Palestinians like to fire off cheap rockets in the general direction of nowhere: it’s noisy and it feels like power and it’s about as much as they can understand about things. Street cred. Fashion. About the same reason Obambus likes green projects. Shows good intentions. About the same reason otherwise (marginally) competent scientists get sucked up into AGW. Psychological reasons. Just the kind Eric Hoffer dissects and explains.
Still, the cost of weapons is a more complex equation, we spend humongous on weapons to destroy goat farmers these days. And now that you mention it, I don’t much like that either, so maybe we’re in no position to throw stones. Though at least throwing stones is cheap.
Josh @ 22 said:
“I think it’s pretty much the same reason Mexican gardeners insist on using leaf blowers gardening in LA where there are generally few leaves to blow,…”
It takes less effort to use a leaf blower than a rake. On this topic, I did my annual rite-of-fall where I get on the roof and clean out the rain gutters. I call this exercise “dancing on the roof” and while doing so have visions of Dick van Dyke in “Mary Poppins”. In the past I did this chore with the garden hose but a neighbor suggested using a leaf blower. I followed his advice and found that a leaf blower is a really good way to clean out the rain gutters.
Concerning the use of expensive weapons against goat farmers: I once read that the War in Afghanistan is best described as the “21st Century versus the Flintstones”.
Eggplant #21:
The 21cm diameter Katyusha of WWII was employed as an artillery weapon, just as the German Nebelwherfer was (designed to launch smoke-laying rockets, it was adapted as rocket artillery), as well as similar Allied unguided rockets launched from atop tanks and assault landing barges. Like the MRLS, it was a cheap way to give a short intense barrage as part of an assault.
In contrast, the Scud in the Iran-Iraq war was used just like the V-2 and V-1 in WWII, as “Vengeance” weapons. None of those users had an Air Force capable of attacking enemy’s cities to any significant degree and the ability to do so to a limited degree made them feel better about their own desperate circumstances. The WWII Japanese balloon attacks on the USA had a similar purpose (they launched 15,000 of those things at us and untold numbers are no doubt still lying in the bushes somewhere waiting to blow up unsuspecting hikers).
The V-1 and V-2 were used tactically to a limited degree,. They were fired at Bastogne during et Battle of the Bulge and at the bridge at Remagen after the Allies captured it.
Recall that in Desert Storm, Saddam used the Scud in an attempt to draw Israel into the war and thus break up the coalition formed against him. The Patriot batteries the US located in Israel at least gave the Israelis the feeling that they did not just have to sit and take it. As it was I understand that the only reason the IDF did not strike back against Iraq was that the we refused to give them the IFF codes.
The terrorists of Gaza are using what is basically an artillery rocket as a Vengeance weapon, required due to their limited abilities, and enabled only because they have a sanctuary from which to do so. It’s as if the German in WWII were allowed to launch rockets at London from a ship in the Thames River, marked with a red cross to keep it safe.
Josh @ 13 said:
“You don’t stop the rockets by bombing the rockets, you stop the rockets by killing the people.”
War is atrocity and essentially irrational. Moonbats believe that war can be stopped by appealing towards people’s better nature. Golda Meir quote: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us”. The William T. Sherman theory of war is correct, i.e. war ends when enough of the enemy has been killed in combat. Israel and the Palestinians appear to be locked in endless war. Israel could inflict a knockout punch against the Palestinians but has always opted not to. It appears that Israel aims for the “cease fire” but never the knockout punch. Is “endless war” Israel’s strategic objective?
Eggplant…
Israeli is in a weird strategic position: she has an ineradicable dependency upon trade and resources from patron powers — most notably America.
So her strategy is a hybrid, quite unlike anything that’s gone before.
Without her patrons, her vaunted strength would whither very, very fast. So, in the ultimate, Israel always minds her patrons. (‘the West’) Because they are a collective, a quasi-alliance, (NATO is now a military alliance in peacetime — very anomalous) Tel Aviv is constantly threading the needle of least-bad solutions.
In the longer run, her only ambit is to displace irritating neighbors ever further away from Tel Aviv — her current center of (civic) gravity.
It is with this in mind that Gaza keeps gaining priority. Even though it’s not otherwise essential ground for Israel.
Tehran fully understands that Tel Aviv strikes are a red line — and thus she has induced/ duped Hamas to do her bidding — to take the pressure off of her atomic sprint — and to displace Damascus from the headlines while Assad is reeling.
One must assume, by this time, that IRGC operatives are now hyper-active in Syria — and pretty much everywhere else, too.
ALL of these gambits are designed to overload the Wan’s input buffer: making him resolute in his irresolution.
=====
It’s in the nature of his psyche for the Wan to be flip-flopping as his amygdala is overloaded with facts.
Do NOT be shocked to find that he needs a ‘vacation’ from his troubles — lest he entirely breakdown.
The trip to Burma is just such a vacation — and that is its purpose. It should be obvious to the informed observer that nothing of significance can possibly be on his schedule — other than photo ops.
He’s positioned entirely away from the action.
Likewise, Clinton flew off to Australia, just in time to miss the Congressional inquiries. What an amazing coincidence. Likewise, nothing of importance kept her ‘busy.’
None of these photo-ops should be taken to mean that the maladministration has a clue into how to thwart Red Chinese expansionism towards their south.
Heck, even the CCP can’t control the PLA or PLAN. THAT’S the nut of the matter.
Since the CCP is swapping out leaders, meaning that no new policy initiatives from Beijing will occur for months, it was safe for our Dear Leader to hide in front of the cameras.
Is “endless war” Israel’s strategic objective?
Israel’s political problem is that they forgot what ‘Never Again’ realty means.
btw – Ariel Sharon’s son recommends retaking Gaza.
A decisive conclusion is necessary
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=292466
#26- do you think it possible that the Whan will resign, citing ‘ill health’?
@27
Does Jackson III ring a bell?
e @ 25: Is “endless war” Israel’s strategic objective?
More like surviving endless war.
I wonder if the Muzzies appreciate that, it’s their style.
If this *is* basically the Israeli goal, kicking the can down an endless road, I understand but do not agree, mostly because it hasn’t worked with spit for the last 30 years. Absent real-life history, I might think it worth a try.
e @ 23: I followed his advice and found that a leaf blower is a really good way to clean out the rain gutters.
Yeah, but it’s a piss-poor way to clear out maybe a single gumwrapper from three floors of stairwells, especially when what is really needed is a wet mop. And my gutters even here in Los Angeles accumulate muck and mud that I don’t think a blower is going to touch.
Regarding the economics of Nuclear Missile Defense: The cost trade is not quite as obvious as the anti missile defense propagandists would have us believe. I have read that the cost of a nuclear warhead is on the order of $100 million. (This makes sense, given what is inside the warhead.) Add in the cost of the rocket, the cost of command and control (including observation satellites) and the cost of maintaining personnel and, SURPRISE, the cost of defense is actually a bit smaller than the cost of offense on a per warhead basis.
More: It is also important to recognize the economic value of what is being defended. An offensive missile may cost $100+ million, but a city being defended is worth trillions of dollars and vast numbers of lives. How much insurance is needed to protect trillions of dollars and multitudes of lives?
Finally, contrary to what the anti missile defense people claim, missile defense is inherently stabilizing. If an aggressor’s objective is to obliterate his victim while thereby gaining some measure of superiority (or survival), an effective defense makes calculating the outcome of an attack virtually impossible – even if the defense is itself somewhat less than perfect.
Chet
One man has the answer for the problem of Gaza: “Joe Biden in ’0 Sixteen”
“Sombody ask Joe.”
Chet Richards @ 30 said:
“Regarding the economics of Nuclear Missile Defense: The cost trade is not quite as obvious as the anti missile defense propagandists would have us believe. …. SURPRISE, the cost of defense is actually a bit smaller than the cost of offense on a per warhead basis.”
This comment thread has almost timed out and chances are no one will read this comment (this is my last comment for this thread).
Speaking as a professional aerospace engineer, the only anti-ballistic missile defense system against a sophisticated opponent (Soviet Union) that had a prayer of actually working was the old Safeguard System, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeguard_Program
The technology developed for Safeguard was “heroic” in its complexity and sophistication. In particular, the Sprint ABM which flew at Mach 10 in the lower atmosphere, pulled 100g and used an enhanced radiation warhead was a technological masterpiece. Never the less, the Safeguard ABM system created more questions than answers. Both the United States and Soviet Union concluded the problem was “too hard” and made it go away with the ABM treaty. The Star Wars ABM system that Ed Teller was so hot about (nuclear pumped x-ray laser) was pure moonshine and based upon a faulty weapons test. The various nonnuclear ABM systems will work if the enemy is cooperative and makes no attempt to saturate the system with too many reentry vehicles or does something naughty like pop off a nuke above the atmosphere to disable the radar tracking. A working ABM system against ICBMs with nukes is orders of magnitude harder to do than Iron Dome.
#19 RWE
The C-RAM system is a ground based system deployed in 2005 in Iraq and optimized for Rocket and Artillery interception. The range is 2.2 Miles utilizing 20mm discarding sabot rounds at a muzzle velocity of 3600 fps. Rate of fire is 50 rounds/second. Regards
Re 26. blert
Sir,
You are using “Tel Aviv” as a person might use “Washington, DC”. However, the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. The big decisions are made in Jerusalem.
It is true that most of the population is in and around Tel Aviv, though Jerusalem has a larger population than Tel Aviv proper. TA is like Los Angeles, lots of other cities and towns get lumped in within greater TA. Therefore, as you note, missile attacks on greater TA are a big big deal.
re 32. Eggplant
Sir,
I heard the Soviets deployed (and perhaps still deploy) a nuclear tipped ABM system around Moscow. I suppose the ABM would have be used to buy time to get the VIPs down to the subway.
Eggplant @32
Actually, the Safeguard system had a big flaw in its computation scheme. It could track up to 100 objects. With 101 objects the software crashed and no objects could be tracked. THAT is the reason the system was cancelled – it had nothing to do with missile dynamics or politics. Philco worked for years, after the Safeguard cancellation, trying to solve that problem, and failed. The problem was later solved a different way.
As far as exoatmospheric interception: The intercept problem boils down to post boost vehicle divert acceleration capability. The divert thrusters are the actuators of a servo. The system simply nulls out the divert error signal and a collision occurs. It really works. The problem of decoys has also been worked. That’s all I can say.
Space Based boost phase intercept is the best way to go. Several plausible schemes are attractive here, from high speed kinetic interceptors to High Energy Lasers (HEL) – chemical, or soon electric – but not x-ray lasers. Some architectures for space based boost phase defense are doable and cost effective. However, they can’t be done because of political restrictions – not technical.
The real impediment to a successful missile defense is political, not technical or cost.
I do have deep expertise in this area having worked the various BMD problems and technologies, intermittently, for forty years. This, both in industry for the Army and Air Force, and as an SDIO and Air Force SETA.
Chet
Chet @ 35,
Your comment at 35 was interesting and I’m compelled to ask some questions even though this thread is nearly expired. I do entry vehicle thermal protection systems for a living and the history of reentry vehicle (RV) design is a hobby of mine. I’ve been studying the Titan-II and Mk-6 RV. The Mk-6 was developed by General Electric (GE) at Valley Forge and many technical reports associated with the Mk-6 have been declassified. Do you know anything about the Titan-II or the Mk-6? For example do you know why GE opted to have a nose radius to base radius ratio of 1:2 for the Mk-6? That radius ratio design rule of thumb propagated into many later NASA entry vehicle designs but no one knows why 1:2 was selected. The base geometry for the Mk-6 in the declassified GE reports was originally a spherical section but the deployed version of the Mk-6 that can be seen in the museums has a flat base. Aerodynamically a flat base makes no sense and would tend to make the RV aerodynamically unstable. The original GE design was correct. Why did GE go to the less stable flat base? Also the adapter/spacer section in the Titan-II between the RV and the second stage originally had doors on the side and contained tubes for ejecting decoys, refer to:
http://heroicrelics.org/8th-air-museum/titan-ii-rv/dsc50639.jpg.html
Some of the declassified reports described decoys made out of stainless steel mesh covered with teflon that opened up like umbrellas. The old timers say that teflon was originally developed by Dupont as a thermal protection system material. The concept of an umbrella decoy seemed like a clever design. However the decoys were never actually used in the deployed version of the Titan-II and the tubes in the adapter section were left empty. Why was the decoy system abandoned? The Mk-6 had a huge volume and many of the early flight tests were heavily instrumented. I have reports describing experimental instruments carried inside the Mk-6 during flight tests. For example there was one interesting concept that measured MHD effects in the boundary layer by creating a magnetic field and measuring surface electrical current. However there is nothing in the literature describing the actual results of the instruments. Were the experiments failures? I suspect many of the reports describing the Mk-6 were shredded before they were declassified. A huge body of knowledge was lost that might have been useful in designing nonmilitary entry vehicles.
Eggplant @ 36
The following web site gives some insight into your question:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/reentry_vehicle.html
Also, Google “reentry vehicle beta” and “reentry vehicle beta angle” for government documents relating to your question.
I did do flight instrumentation for a much later test RV design while working at Aeronutronic. This was a high beta vehicle. I really did not have much insight into the early designs except that stability was a major concern. What I was told is that the cone-cylinder-cone shape (favored by the Soviets) was adopted for a while because it was stable.
The above web site discusses the utility of blunt nose tips for reduced thermal loads – but that is your expertise, not mine.
The key thing that I learned was that high beta was necessary for precision targeting. High beta RV’s are, of course, dynamically unstable. This problem is solved with heavy ballast in the forward portion of the RV.
The early decoys were designed to fool radars. They typically emulated radar cross section and diffraction patterns, as well as coning dynamics, while remaining small and light weight. These worked pretty well in the vacuum but were quickly stripped off during reentry. This aero stripping was a major reason for the early emphasis on terminal (endoatmospheric) defense.
Later decoys had the additional requirement to emulate the EO/IR signature of an RV in midcourse. Again, reentry strips these off, as well.
The big problem with all decoys is that it is nearly impossible for a decoy, or an enveloping balloon, to fully emulate a real RV. There is always some residual signature error which unmasks the decoy. The consequence of this is interesting: Bill O’Neil (my boss for 10 years) recognized this early on (1960′s) and proposed that the best “decoy” is a real, nuclear weapon equipped, RV. He then came up with the concept of the MIRV, worked out the flight controls and successfully flight tested the concept during the Reentry Measurements Program in the late 60′s. In so doing, he changed world history.
Chet
Chet,
Thank you for the link. I found it very interesting. Another Internet link about entry vehicles can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry
The above link has the usual Wikipedia issues that idiots come in afterwards and replace facts with disinformation. Trying to write an article on Wikipedia is like building a sand castle on the beach and then watching the tide come in.
You’re correct that I work with low beta RVs. For example the Mk-6 which was a high beta RV had a beta of 2711 kg/m^2 but the 70 deg. half angle sphere-cone used for Viking, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and MSL had a beta of 61 kg/m^2. The 70 deg. sphere-cone maximized bluntness to minimize thermal protection mass as shown by Allen and Eggers’ theory. I actually had the privilege of meeting Alfred J. Eggers. We invited him for a visit in the hope that he would tell us stories about entry vehicles. Even though he was quite elderly, he was still pretty sharp. Unfortunately he was more interested in talking about the XB-70 Valkyrie than blunt bodies. Since we were all aeronautical engineers, we were delighted to hear about the Valkyrie but his stories were not particularly useful (nobody really cares about supersonic bombers anymore).
It’s my understanding that the Mk-4 which was a cone-cylinder-cone shape had hypersonic dynamic stability issues (it tended to wag like a dog’s tail at supersonic speeds). Supposedly there were also shock-shock interactions on the Mk-4′s flair. A retired Lockheed hypersonics guy told me that realizing the Mk-4 was a bad idea was one of the major lessons-learned in the early 1960s. The Mk-4 was replaced by the more stable Mk-6 which was a sphere-cone. However most sphere-cones still had dynamic stability issues. The 70 deg. sphere-cone is always unstable in a nitrogen atmosphere and can only be used in a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Even in carbon dioxide, the 70 deg. sphere-cone will start to tumble when the Mach number goes under 1.7 . This aspects forces deployment of the parachute at supersonic speed which is a scary thing to do. A sphere-cone needs to have a half angle smaller than 45 deg. to be stable from entry to impact. A 45 deg. sphere-cone was used for Pioneer Venus and the Galileo Probe. However even the 45 deg. sphere-cone starts to oscillate at trans-sonic speeds and requires ballast to get the center-of-gravity forward.
In the article that you linked, there was an incorrect sentence:
“Ultimately, they decided upon a phenolic resin plastic. They decided to use a nylon cloth impregnated with the phenolic resin and molded into the needed shape.”
Nylon cloth was used in the Mk-6 and then immediately abandoned. General Electric’s later RV designs used Rayon cloth instead. Nobody knows why GE abandoned Nylon and went to Rayon (I’m sure they had excellent reasons). The carbon-phenolic/Rayon issue is a Major Problem right now because America abandoned the original Rayon manufacturing process due to it being considered too damaging to the environment (produced lots of toxic waste). There are Rayon substitutes but the USAF spent hundreds of millions of dollar qualifying the original Rayon material for thermal protection use. No one knows for sure whether the modern substitutes have the right material properties. This sort of thing is a reoccurring problem, i.e. the loss of basic manufacturing capability. Many materials with significant national security implications can no longer be manufactured in America because the technology has been lost.