We heard so much of this wunder waffen Patriot missile .Apparently the Israeli twice missed to hit rather simple Hezbollah drone using Patriot missile. It has wide ranging implication, if this is not a fluke.
How Did Hezbollah's Drone Evade a Patriot Missile?
And does that mean we should be suddenly very worried?
By
Jul 29, 2016
Israel's air defenses, equipped with U.S.
, are among the best in the world. Yet earlier this month they failed to shoot down a drone intruder. What happened? And what does it mean for the future?
On July 17, an unmanned aircraft crossed the border from Syria into the Golan Heights, setting off Israeli air raid sirens. "The aircraft was detected prior to entering the nation's territory and was fully tracked," according to a statement from the IDF.
It is not clear whether the missiles were fired sequentially or at the same time. (Sometimes Israel will fire two missiles simultaneously but on different trajectories to guarantee a hit.) This is not the first incursion from across the Syrian border, and Israel has shot down previous intruding drones, as
The Patriot missile is good at its job.
This time, though, the missiles failed to bring down the target (watch video of missile smoke trail
. One of the missiles did detonate mid-air. According to the Jerusalem Post,
by falling shrapnel. Israel then made another interception attempt, this one most likely by an F-16 firing an air-to-air missile at the drone. The details are not available, but we know this missile also missed. The drone later crossed back over the border to Syria.
A news report quoted Hezbollah, the Islamist militant group based in Lebanon, as saying that the drone was theirs and had been "
However, the IDF have not officially identified the origin of the drone and have reportedly contacted Russian staff in Syria to help establish where it came from.
It is hard to see such a slow-moving and obvious target like this could evade a Patriot missile.
It is possible that the drone did belong to Hezbollah. The organization has been flying
. The first few incursions were successful, but Israel subsequently beefed up defenses. When three small Ababil drones carrying explosives came over the border in 2005 they were all shot down by Israeli F-16s. In 2012 another Hezbollah drone got close enough to photograph the Israeli nuclear weapons complex at Dimona before it was downed.
Although Hezbollah claim to have built their own drones, the aircraft appear to be based heavily on Iranian designs—which makes sense, with Iran being a major supporter of the group. Hezbollah's
looks to be a direct copy, if not an export version, of the
(which itself bears a strong resemblance to the Israeli-made
drone operated by the U.S. Israeli news site DebkaFile, meanwhile cites "military and intelligence sources"
, an Iranian copy of the
by Boeing subsidiary Insitu.
The Scan Eagle has had a remarkable career since its first flight in 2002. It started out as a
; the 10-foot Scan Eagle can fly for twenty hours or more at 70 mph. Then the U.S. Navy started flying these drones and selling them to 19 other countries, including Japan, the UK and Spain. Famously, a Scan Eagle crashed in Iran in 2012 (the U.S.
it was one of theirs). The country claims to have reverse-engineered the design to create the Yasir. They even
in 2013 as proof of their prowess.
So perhaps this was the drone that invaded Israel—a Hezbollah-operated version of an Iranian drone whose design was stolen in the first place. But the Scan Eagle is not a stealthy or agile drone and the Yasir adds nothing to the design. It is hard to see such a slow-moving and obvious target like this could evade a Patriot missile.
According to Debka's sources, the drone had been upgraded by "Chinese cyber warfare specialists." This seems rather speculative at best. For one thing, cyber warfare is a different discipline than engineering
to protect aircraft. More realistically is what Tal Inbar, head of the Space and UAV Research Center at the
, told Haaretz: that a
"It is not easy to shoot down drones because of their size, speed, and the materials they are made from, which make detection difficult."
Small size means that drones have a much smaller radar signature than manned aircraft. They are generally made of composites rather than metal, and this too makes them harder to spot. Flying slowly they tend to merge into the background clutter. At low altitude there are many other objects moving at similar speeds, including vehicles, birds, wind turbines and even trees waving in the wind, and some radar tends to filter out anything moving at less than 80 mph (helicopters are still visible from their high-speed rotor blades).
"It is not easy to shoot down drones because of their size, speed, and the materials they are made from."
However, if you believe the Israeli Defense Force's statement that they spotted the drone at once and tracked it continuously, then the problem has more to do with engaging it with a missile. The Patriot missile has been hugely upgraded since the
and it is considered highly reliable and effective.
It's possible that the missiles locked on but the lock was broken, or the proximity fuze—which detonates the missile when it gets close enough to the target—failed. Missiles can have a variety of proximity fuzes based on radar or laser reflections, and some (like early Sidewinders) use
for proximity sensing as well as guidance. The Patriot has an M818 E2
, but it seems that only one mode can be used at a time. Clearly, if anyone has a means of jamming or spoofing this fuze—and at least one missile did detonate, having apparently sensed a target—then the consequences are potentially serious.
It is possible that the failure to intercept on this occasion was sheer bad luck, and that future drone intruders will be shot down easily. But if "Chinese cyber-warfare specialists" or other developers have found a way for non-stealthy drones to shrug off Patriot missiles, then the prospects are alarming. Especially if that technology is already in the hands of terrorist groups like Hezbollah, and drones are spreading rapidly among groups like ISIS.