The Israeli answer to shoulder launched missiles – 2
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Part Two
The first part described the system and its modus operandi.
The slow, very slow, handling of a super imminent threat has been going on for years and has been shared by several Israeli governments.
The Israel’s State Comptroller already investigated this issue back in 2011, asking why Israeli passenger planes haven’t been equipped with missile defense systems –nine years after the government approved the plan.
Seven years ago, pilots working for the three Israeli airlines warned then-Minister of Transportation Shaul Mofaz that the situation is a prescription for a “Fiasco”.
Back in November 2002, terrorists tried to bring down an Arkia airline plane as it took off from Mombasa Airport. Their rockets missed, however, and the disaster was averted.
Immediately after the attempt to hit the Israeli passenger aircraft, a decision was taken to equip the Israeli passenger aircraft with a flare based counter measures system. Israeli military industries (IMI) even developed “Dark Flares” to minimize the danger of panic if the system is activated without a reason over a busy airport.
The flares were dismissed after it became clear that there is great opposition in many countries to allow aircraft carrying flares to land in their airports
The severity of the threat couldn’t overcome the various obstacles, mostly budgetary concerns, which prevented the installation of a defense system on all Israeli passenger planes. There were problems, but if anyone had been seriously meaning to do something about it the problems would have been solved very quickly. In Israel, though, nothing is done unless the threat is immediate. Since Hezbollah and Hamas launched rockets at Israel from Lebanon and Gaza, respectively, Rafael managed to deploy the first Iron Dome rocket interceptor system within less than three years. The Israeli researchers themselves are very capable. The problems appear, however, when the government gets involved and does not understand the threat.
In this case, despite repeated, urgent warnings from all relevant intelligence organizations, no one in the government did anything to have the system installed much sooner.
“Sky Shield” employs very advanced technology and it enables Elbit systems to offer variants of the system to specific uses.
iHLS editor-in-chief
