Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa

Israel Deploys a Miniature Missile Defence System

Pierre Klochendler

NAHAL OZ, ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER, Mar 18 2011 (IPS) - Amidst recrudescence of tension on this critical front, the Israeli army is hoping to gain the technological upper hand in missile combat with ‘Palestinian militants’ by equipping one of its most sophisticated tanks with a miniature missile defence system.

The heightening tension on the Israel-Gaza border was manifested last Wednesday when Palestinian militants — regarded as ‘fighters’ in Palestine — launched a ‘Qassam’ rocket on the Israeli town of Sderot. Israeli warplanes ‘retaliated’, bombing ‘Hamas’ targets inside the Gaza Strip, and killing three Palestinians.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, is at daggers drawn with the Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas and his Al-Fatah.

The miniature missile defence system known as the new Active Protection System, or APS — also called the ‘Windbreaker’ — supplements the ‘Arrow’ anti-ballistic missiles system and the ‘Iron Dome’ against short-range artillery shells and rockets, like the tank-piercing Palestinian Qassam.

Israeli army sources say that the Windbreaker was successfully deployed earlier this month by the 9th battalion of the 401st armoured Brigade on the Nahal Oz section of the volatile border in a mock combat against an anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian militants.

With its sensors and radar, the APS/Windbreaker detects an incoming missile, dispatches interceptor missiles, and destroys the hostile weapon before it can hit the tank. “It’s like someone pointing a gun at you and firing a bullet, and you pull your gun and you fire a bullet to hit his bullet,” Ra’anan Gissin, an Israeli military expert, explains graphically.

Anti-tank missiles are sporadically fired against army patrols along the Israel- Gaza border. Two years after Israel’s 2009 war on Hamas in Gaza, the ground activity on this front is now focused on the de facto buffer zone of several hundred metres created unilaterally by the Israeli army inside the Palestinian area to prevent it from being used as a rocket launching pad.

Israeli military intelligence officials say that Palestinian militants have been emulating the Lebanese ‘Hezbollah’, also upgrading their anti-tank capability with hundreds of weapons, including the sophisticated ‘Kornet’ missile and other ‘tie-breaker’ weaponry.

On Tuesday, Israeli commandos claimed to have intercepted a shipment of armament allegedly smuggled from Iran via Syria en route to Gaza. Military sources say the hidden consignment included advanced surface-to-sea missiles C-704s.

The Israeli quest for ultimate invulnerability of its tanks started some forty years ago. Since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, tanks have become increasingly defenceless, an easy prey to armour-piercing rockets, according to Israeli army sources.

“Rather than traditionally relying on passive protection provided by heavy armor, adding more steel plates, the tank can now neutralise missiles, regain its edge on the battlefield,” says Gen. (Res.) Uzi Elam, former Chief Scientist at the Israeli Defence Ministry, who was part of the development. “It’s an impressive achievement for the R&D community in Israel,” he adds.

The weak point of the sophisticated APS is the enormous cost amounting to one million U.S. dollar per tank. But Israeli military sources trust that success in the arms bazaar will trigger other armies to express interest in the technology, and thus enable the recouping of the investment.

The Windbreaker was developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems together with Israel Aircraft Industries in the wake of Israel’s 2006 war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, during which the vulnerability of tanks to missile attacks was further exposed.

That war — known as the Second Lebanon War in Israel, more than 20 years after the First Lebanon War — “constituted a major change in the delicate balance between our offensive superiority in the battlefield in terms of tanks, and Hezbollah’s ability to counter that advantage with missiles,” recalls Gissin.

The new technology will impact on the future battleground, he asserts: “In asymmetrical wars, tanks are used as a means to protect crews and bring them closer to the point of encounter without exposing them.”

Confidence in the armoured corps is gradually being restored, Israeli analysts concur. Much in the spirit of the Biblical ‘an eye for an eye’, they believe the Windbreaker will change how the Israeli army fights its enemies, not just tank for tank, fire with fire, but anti-tank missiles with anti-missile missiles.

Hence, this gung-ho warning towards the Hezbollah leader:”I’d suggest Hassan Nasrallah not to test our new systems because if he decides to launch the next round, he’s in for a great surprise,” cautions Gissin.

Yet, with all the technological might of their army, Israelis continue to grapple with fears of “more existential threats”. They realise the Sisyphus-like endeavour to shield both civilians and soldiers from missiles would not shield them from the international opprobrium over Israel’s 43-year occupation of Palestinian lands.

In face of mounting diplomatic isolation, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is desperately trying to counter Israel’s negative “image” as “peace objector” due to its settlement policy.

Appreciating the power inherent in victimhood and weakness, it thus decided to release graphic pictures of the bodies of the five family members stabbed to death on Mar. 11 allegedly by a Palestinian who had broken into their home in a West Bank settlement. The cabinet decision raised some eyebrows.

Yuli Edelstein, the minister assigned with the task of disseminating the photos on the Internet, defended the controversial choice, arguing in the liberal newspaper Haaretz that “in an atmosphere of demonisation of Israel, there must be a response.”

The “response” was short of containing what the Netanyahu government perceives as the next “strategic challenge”, a “tsunami-like” tide of international recognition of Palestinian statehood. Last Tuesday, Uruguay became the latest in a string of over a half-dozen countries in South America to recognise an independent Palestine.

Other countries are upgrading the diplomatic status of Palestinian representations. Also French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé declared that EU recognition of Palestinian statehood was a “possibility that should be kept in mind.”