Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Mystery of the drones

pv vivekanand

Israeli military intelligence seems to be in uproar not only over the failure of the country's defences to intercept an Iranian-made unmanned drone that flew over northern Israel on Nov.8, but also over the emergence of aerial photographs that were proved to have been not taken by the drone but sometime earlier.
Israel has established that the drone — or unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV —  was an Iranian-made Mirsad-1 aircraft with a payload of 40 kilogrammes, meaning it could carry that much explosives to be dropped by remote control, according to a report carried on the website of an agency close to Israeli intelligence group Mossad.
The incident is dealt with by the Israelis with utmost seriousness, given the widespread belief that Israel might launch attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities since it believes that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons which could threaten the Jewish state's military dominance of the region.
The website report said the drone could also carry aerial cameras which would transmit back photographs of target areas.
The drone, launched by Lebanon's Hizbollah group from the Lebanese side of the border, stayed undetected over northern Israeli town of Nahariya for nearly 12 minutes before heading back. It crashed on the Lebanese side of the border.
Four days later, Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah displayed on the group's Al Manar Television aerial photographs which he said were taking by the drone before it crashed.
Now, the Israelis are worried on several counts, says the website report:
First that the country's US-made Hawk anti-missile system deployed near the border failed to intercept the drone. The system did not register the entry of the drone. The explanation was that the drone was too small to be detected by the Hawks' radar scanners. Had the Patriot missile defence system was deployed there instead of the Hawks, the Patriot scanner would have spotted the drone and transmitted the information early enough for it to be downed.
Second, the aerial photographs displayed by Nasrallah showed a Patriot anti-missile defence system in place near the border. However, the mobile Patriot system was not present at the site on Nov.8 since it was removed from there for routine maintenance and the Hawk system was deployed there temporarily. Therefore, it was impossible that the drone which entered Israeli airspace on Nov.8 could have taken the photograph of the Patriot system in place.
That meant one of three things, according to the website report.
First: The pictures were taken by the same or a similar drone which entered Israeli skies undetected on a date prior to Nov.8 and this implied that the Patriot radar which was present was as ineffective as the Hawk system.
Second: Hizbollah might have obtained the photographs from another source, possibly a private satellite company, which could also have notified Hizbollah that the Patriot missile defence system was not present near the border on Nov.8.
Third: Hizbollah might have its own agents in northern Israel.
Two days later, on Nov.10, a "foreign" submarine entered Israel's territorial waters off the same town, Nahariya, but fled before
Israeli warships appeared on the scene.
Israeli intelligence does not think that the submarine was one of the three Russian-made 3,000-tonne Kilo-class subs purchased by the Iranians in the mid-90s.
Kilo-class submarines are 72 meters long, have a crew of 52 and are capable of navigating the Mediterranean, according to the website report.
However, it would take at least to weeks before the Iranian sub to reach Israeli waters because it would have to sail around the Cape of Good Hope and through the Straits of Gibraltar. At some point on another, the sub would have to expose itself to Western or Israeli intelligence surveillance, says the report.
According to the report, "it is far more likely that the unidentified sub was Western and came close to the Israeli coast to find out what caused the failure of Israel’s early warning systems to catch the flying invader two days earlier and see if Israel had plugged the hole in its radar.
"The sub would also have been instructed to see if the Patriot battery had been repositioned - or perhaps different kinds of electronic tracking and interception devices. After collecting some answers, the sub headed out."
Israel has three advanced German-made Dolphin-class subs equipped with long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting Iranian, Pakistani and Indian nuclear facilities. One of the three subs is patrolling the Arabian Sea.
Immediately after the Nov.8 incident, Israeli chief of staff Moshe Yaalon said in a report to a parliamentary committee that the drone was capable of carrying a payload of 40 kilos and therefore it could be used to bomb Israel from across the border in Lebanon. It could also carry a camera capable of transmitting images while the plane is in motion. In fact, the crashed drone carried such a camera, he said.
Israeli investigations found that experts rom the Iranian Revolutionary Guards took part in the launch of the drone from Lebanon, said Israeli military affairs expert Ze'ev Schiff, who argued that "the Iranian activity can be regarded as a clear-cut case of aggression against Israel."
According to Schiff, the aircraft is considered technologically very simple, with a pre-programmed route that is installed before launch. During the flight, a camera sends images back to a ground station, which was supposedly manned by Iranians, and the plane is apparently supposed to land by parachute.
"What makes it unusual is that Iranian military experts from the Revolutionary Guards sent their people to a third country to act against Israel," sais Schiff. "Their support for Palestinian .... groups was usually done with money or weapons. In this case, Iranians were involved directly in launching the drone and preparing it for its mission."
He said it is possible the Lebanese did not know about the activity and the preparations and did not know about the Iranian involvement, but since it took place on Lebanese territory, the Lebanese government is "directly responsible for the act of aggression."
The Iranians supplied several such planes to the Hizbollah, just as they supplied rockets, Schiff argued. One of the Iranian conditions for the supply of the drones was that Hizbollah get clearance from Tehran before any launch, according to Schiff.
Sheikh Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, said on Nov.12 that the group possessed drones that can carry explosives to strike targets deep inside Israel if the Jewish state attacks Lebanon.
“I confirm what the Israeli chief of staff has said, Mirsad I can carry explosives of about 40 and 50 kilogrammes," he said. “It does not have the capacity of only reaching Nahariya, but deeper and deeper, against electricity and water installations and military targets."
“Israel monitors Lebanon from the air to aggress it, and we can monitor bases, airports, illegal settlements, installations and the infrastructure in northern Palestine (Israel) in order to defend our country," he said.
Nasrallah said Mirsad 1 was built by Hezbollah experts, and not by Iranian expertise as claimed by Israeli military officials.
“We do not need anybody’s help in that sector,” he added.
On Monday, two Katyusha rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon but they caused no casualties.
A little-known group calling itself Martyr Ghaleb Alawi Group, named after a senior Hizbollah security official who was killed in a Beirut bomb attack in July, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Hizbollah, which played a key role in pressuring Israel to withdrawing its military from southern Lebanon after a 17-year occupation in 1999, has pledge to help the Palestinian cause in whatever manner it could. That, despite its brave talk, should be worrisome for Israel.



separate box

Iranian drone project

Iranians developed its own drone as part of their Revolutionary Guard’s “flying objects” programme that was launched in the 90s but was successful only last year after they purchased lightweight engines made in Japan, Germany and even the United States.
It has built three types of drones and most were tested successfully, although the Mirsad-1 was the only one tried in field conditions.
The Mirsad-2, which was built for naval photography, was tested twice, both times taking photographs of US warships in the Gulf. The Americans shot at a slow-flying Iranian drone but missed.
Iran’s third drone, whose name is unknown in the West, is to be used for long-range reconnaissance flights. It is not yet operational.
Iran is under international sanctions, including a weapons embargo, and it has to carry out all of its research and development alone and buy parts and technology on the black market.


Israeli drones

Israel has an unknown number of US-made advanced drones, mainly of the Predator type. It uses them as surveillance aircraft, mainly in Lebanese airspace, but they could also be equipped with weapons, including chemical and biological agents.
The US has successfully used its Predator drone in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Defence Department claimed a nearly "100 percent record of hits" in several dozen battlefield attacks.
Iraqis shot one of them down before the US launched war on the country in March 2003.
The US used another type of a drone — MQ-IB — in Yemen in November 2002 to kill six suspected Al Qaeda activists, including a key planner in the bloody attack on the American destroyer USS Cole. The drone fired a Hellfire missile at a vehicle carrying Ali Qaed Senyan Al Harethi, a key suspect in the October 2000 attack in Yemen on the Cole, and five others.
Reports said at that time said the drone was flown by a pilot on the ground in French-garrisoned Djibouti and overseen by commanders in in the Gulf.