Incredible Tech Breakthrough – Massive Government Fiasco

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The Israeli security establishment announced yesterday that the final test for the Sky Shield defense system has been conducted successfully. Sky Shield is a missile defense system aimed at protecting Israeli airplanes from shoulder-launched missiles.

Elbit Systems did achieve something great here, but even that can’t conceal the huge fiasco involving the Israeli government and the way it dealt with this threat. It seems to be just another fiasco added to the recent pile, but trust me, this is big.

The State Comptroller already investigated this issue back in 2011, asking why haven’t Israeli passenger planes been equipped with similar missile defense systems – ten years after the government approved the plan. This is one of the biggest failures in the history of the Israeli defense establishment. General ineptitude aside, the most probable cause was the government’s inability to see its own decisions carried through. The State Comptroller only had to read what others had to say about the matter – including myself – in order to come to a conclusion very quickly.

Six years ago pilots working for the three Israeli airlines warned then-Minister of Transportation Shaul Mofaz. They called it “the shoulder-launched missiles defense fiasco”. Pilots complained that despite three government resolutions nothing meaningful was done up to that point in order to protect Israeli passenger planes from the deadly weapons, used by many terrorist organizations.

IHLS – Israel Homeland Security

Back in November 2002 terrorists tried to bring down an Arkia plane as it took off from Mombasa Airport. Their rockets missed, however, and the disaster was averted.

The severity of the threat couldn’t overcome the various obstacles, mostly budget concerns, which prevented the installation of a defense system on all 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. When Hezbollah and Hamas rockets were launched at Israel Rafael could have deployed the first Iron Dome system within three years. The Israeli researchers themselves are good people; the problems appear, however, when the government gets involved.

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. Perhaps now things will advance towards full implementation of government decisions, but its more likely that this issue will also be mentioned in future State Comptroller reports.