The Two State Solution

We think this means a state of Israel for the Jews and a state of Palestine for the Palestinians.  US State Department is all in favor. Has been for years.  Israel has given the idea a test run, in Gaza, and it hasn't worked out well.  Israel removed the Jewish residents of Gaza, and turned the area over to the Palestinians.  Since then, Gaza has been firing rockets over the border, which is an act of war in the real world.  It got so bad the Israeli Army had to intervene last year, causing and taking casualties.  I think they did stop the rockets. 
   With that background,  Bebi said he would not favor the "two state solution" just before the Israeli election, which he won on Tuesday.  Our State Dept went ballistic, and after the election, Bebi softened his words about the two state solution.  I haven't bothered to look up just exactly what Bebi said each time.  But I can understand where he is coming from.  Gaza shows how bad the two state solution can be and surely plenty of Israelis don't want to have anything to do with it.  Backing off a bit to mollify the American State Dept is also understandable. 

Gaza Strip Misery?

The Gaza strip is very small,heavily populated, and miserable.  A nearly full page article in the Economist details how bad things are.  The Israeli's won't let anything but food in, the Egyptians are closing the tunnels that used to smuggle in arms and luxury goods, electric power is mostly off.  Then they printed a picture, two small boys, probably seven or eight, playing on a sand pile in front of a crumbling poured concrete building.  The background is pretty miserable, but the two boys are dressed in brand new clean jerseys and patterned shorts.  The clothes look fresh off the rack at  Walmart.  My kids never looked that spandy clean playing out of doors back here in suburban US of A.  Methinks the photo was carefully posed, presumable by Hamas which runs the Gaza strip.
   One wonders why they didn't dress the boys in rags for the photo.  

Would you buy a used jet fighter from this nation?

The Israelis are offering used, but refurbished, Kfir  fighters.  $20 million apiece.  Mach 2+,  Datalink compatible with NATO standards.  Phased array radar, missiles.  Guaranteed for 8000 more flying hours. Air to air refueling.   " The Kfir was designed to be a tough fighter jet. well-built and 'young in spirit'.  The Kfirs we are selecting for refurbishment logged only a few hundred flight hours , their structure is intact, without cracks or fatigue," says Yosef Melamed, general manager of Israeli Aircraft Industry's Lahav division. The aircraft were retired by the Israeli Air Force in the late 90's and stored in the Negev Desert, where it's dry and doesn't rain often.  The Israelis claim the refurbished Kfirs are as good as any other 4th generation fighter. 
   Compared to used F16's at $51 million, or used Tornados for even more, the price is right. 
   Owned by a little old lady and driven only on Sundays.
   Such a deal.

    

Rough Neighborhoods

Aviation Week reports on a bombing raid outside of Khartoum, Sudan back on 24 October of this year.  Satellite photos in the article show before and after.  Before shows a bunch of containers (the ship carried sort) neatly stacked in a yard.  After shows a huge crater in the same yard, no sign of any containers.  Locals reported jet aircraft noises just before the place blew up around midnight.  Explosions and fires raged for hours.  The containers are believed to have held some 200 tons of munitions bound for Gaza or the Sinai peninsula.
   No comment from Israel.
   Rough neighborhood.  Back in 2007  the al- Kibar Syrian nuclear reactor was bombed flat.  In 2009 and Iranian truck convoy in Sudan met with a high explosive mishap while crossing the desert.  Stuxnet went to work back in 2007 and wasn't detected until 2010.  In 2011 a Hamas arms smuggler in Port Sudan was killed from the air. In 2012 electric power lines to Iran's nuclear facilities were bombed.
   No one has claimed credit for any of this.  No comments from Israel either.
   When your existance is threatened, take steps.

Hacking thru the radar

Last week's Israeli Air Force strike in Syria may have used advanced electronic deception transmissions to confuse the up-to-date Russian made Syrian anti aircraft defenses. Systems are known that can invade air defense communications systems, cause them to transmit their radar views back to the attackers, and even issue false orders to cause sensors to look away from attackers, designate radar tracks as friendly, or insert false tracks.
Seeing the enemy radar's view is extremely valuable to attackers, it shows the blind spots in enemy radar coverage and lets the strike aircraft know when they are flying low enough to avoid detection. Radars contain various circuits or software to filter out clutter. It may be possible to crank those filter setting up so high that the attacker's radar tracks are filtered out. Or have the radar label the attackers tracks as friendly airliners. Or simply fill the system with so many false targets that the real attackers are lost in the crowd.
Hard information is a little scarce, Aviation Week is reduced to quoting Arab newspaper articles. "Russian experts are studying why the two state-of-the-art Russian-built radar systems in Syria did not detect the Israeli jets entering Syrian territory" according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan. It goes on to say "Iran reportedly has asked the same question, since it is buying the same system and might have paid for the Syrian acquisitions".
Syria has recently acquired the Tor-M1 (SA-15 Gauntlet) a mobile system with guidance radar, missile launchers and missile reloads all mounted on tracked vehicles. Tor-1 costs $29 million per system.
The actual site of the attack, and it's contents are still a matter of dispute. Some reports place the attack at Tall Al-Abyad up in the Turkish border, others place it at Day az-Zawr out near the Iraqi border. The site may have contained nuclear material on route from North Korea to Iran, or it may have been a more run-of-the-mill storage for conventional munitions bound for Iraq, or Hezballah, or Iran. News reports are conflicting.
Naturally successful use of secret electronic countermeasures tells the enemy that his system is vulnerable and that codes must be changed and fixes invented. The Syrian target must have been pretty high value for the Israelis to disclose the effectiveness of their electronic countermeasures.