Home Front Command ABC Drill in Tel-Aviv
May 25, 2011.
Soldiers operate during a Home Front Command drill which simulated a scenario in which ABC missiles were fired on the city of Tel-Aviv. The drill started at 10:30 AM and took place in two areas: Eicilov Hospital and a country-club which acted as a testing and purification center.
The drill is a result of the collaboration between the Home Front Command, the Israeli Health Department, the MDA, the Israeli Police and local firefighting forces.
The Medical Commander of the Home Front Command, Col. Dr. Ariel Bar, said: "The Home Front Command unit designated to operate in coordination with hospitals did so today with Eicilov Hospital in order to practice emergency situations." He added that the drill was executed in a very professional manner, and the Home Front Command is prepared for any kind of scenario.
The drill was planned by the Home Front Command Medical Branch and the Israeli Ministry of Health, as part of the training regime planned for 2011.
The Home Front Command as well as the Israeli Ministry of Health will carry on enhancing the capabilities of the local authorities and hospitals in similar scenarios.
"Defense News" reports that Elbit Systems Ltd. is working with the Ministry of Defense to develop unmanned cargo plane, dubbed the "Flying Elephant". Sources say that cargo an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a "huge, slow, self takeoff and landing pallet carrier that would fly through high winds and land in austere, unpaved areas."
The Ministry of Defense's Research & Development Directorate (Mafat) launched the project several weeks ago. Under the unpublicized [huh? except for on the internet... -ed.] multiyear contract, Elbit System will develop multiple prototypes of the Flying Elephant, which will be designed for maximum safety, stability, and carrying capacity.
Sources said that the cargo UAV will have limited range given the close proximity of most combat theaters where Israel is likely to deploy large numbers of ground forces. Future versions of the Flying Elephant may be configured for medical evacuation missions, with ground troops uploading severe casualties for the return flight home....
Defense and industry sources say that the development contract covers four years, with possible options for optimizing the aircraft for supporting medical evacuation missions.
"Defense News" said that Elbit Systems would not confirm or deny involvement in the program and referred all queries to the Ministry of Defense. A Ministry of Defense spokesman confirmed the recently awarded development program, and estimated that the first prototype should be ready for testing within two years, but declined to provide additional information.
"Defense News" compares the Flying Elephant with two other Israeli UAVs, one operational, and the other under development. The Israel Air Force deploys a small squadron of one-ton carrying UAVs, the multi-mission Heron, built by Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1) (called the Eitan in Israel). It is far too sophisticated and costly to be used for close range cargo-hauling missions. [ed., not sure what the source is, but IAI themselves put the Heron's carrying capacity at 250kg, or 550 lbs., or 1/4 ton.]
The Flying Elephant will more than double the carrying capacity of the AirMule, a dedicated, multi-mission vertical-takeoff and-landing UAV in advanced flight testing by Yavne, Israel-based Urban Aeronautics Ltd. Defense and industry sources said that the AirMule, with its sophisticated internal lift rotors and low radar signature, represents a different class of the recently expanding cargo UAV market, and cannot be compared with the crude, propeller powered, outsized airframe envisioned for the Flying Elephant.
The operation involved at least 10 undercover agents on the streets of Britain and led directly to a controversial bombing raid into Syrian territory that destroyed a nuclear reactor that was under construction.
It closely mirrored the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas arms trader, who was killed in his hotel room in Dubai last year using agents disguised as tennis players.
The operation began when Israeli intelligence picked up an online booking for a senior Syrian nuclear official at a hotel in Kensington [how the heck do you do that? Monitor clandestinely every hotel in the world? -ed.], west London, in late 2006, according to the Israeli authors of the book Israel vs Iran: the Shadow War.
Mossad then dispatched three undercover teams to Britain including a team of "spotters" who were sent to Heathrow airport to identify the official as he flew in from Damascus under a false name. A second team booked into his hotel, while a third monitored his movements and any visitors.
The agents included members of the Kidon [Spear] division, Mossad's hit squad, and the Neviot [Springs] division, which specialises in breaking into houses, embassies and hotel rooms to install bugging devices.
The first day of the official's trip was apparently devoted to a series of meetings at the Syrian embassy in Belgrave Square but the following day he went shopping before his return to the airport.
The Kidon team followed him closely from shop to shop while the Neviot agents broke into his room and found his laptop. A computer expert took 15 minutes to download the hard drive and install trojan software that allowed Israel to monitor every keystroke he made [the movies make this look easy, but I'm sure the laptop had military-grade encryption, and for a guy to hack in in 15 minutes is another miracle. -ed.]
When the computer material was examined at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, officials found photographs and blueprints for a plutonium reactor at Al Kibar near Deir el-Zor, a remote desert town 80 miles from Syria's border with Iraq.
According to one source quoted in the book, the discovery saved the life of the official, who would otherwise have been killed in Britain, causing a major diplomatic incident.
"His computer and its contents turned out to be his life insurance. If it weren't for that, he wouldn't have left Europe alive," the security official boasted.
In August 2007 Israel apparently sent a special forces team into Syria to collect soil samples near the reactor, then at around 1am on September 5 2007 Israeli fighter bombers attacked the facility in a raid into Syrian airspace that destroyed the plant.More from Doubletapper on the Syria-related sundries:
Today is Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Memorial Day. Instead of barbecue picnics, it is a very somber day here, where we remember all the fallen soldiers and security forces as well as victims of terror. I made this horribly sad video many years ago and I'd like to share it with you today.
I wrote this when I uploaded this video in 2006:
I made this video three years ago in 2003, when we were fighting against suicide bombings and shootings and lynches. This video shows faces of two years worth of those Israelis killed by palestinian terrorism. Oh, and turn your speakers on. I cry each time I watch it.
May They Be the Last
by A Soldier's Mother:
The candle burns slowly down. In a few hours, another siren and more ceremonies.
Last night, a mother walked slowly up onto the stage and lit the torch. A father climbed the steps with a brother and together, their voices cracking with sorrow, they said the mourner's prayer (Kaddish). Young people, who themselves will be soldiers in another few years, sang sad songs or read letters soldiers had written before their deaths.
It was awful. It was painful. It was as it should be.
A young man came up and read a letter from a soldier to Galit, his fiancée. I had heard the letter before and yet each time it breaks the heart. He tells her the operation will take place soon and if she has this letter, it means the worst has happened. He begs her to go on with her life and tells her that he needs to go on this operation. There is nothing he wanted more, he wrote, than to have a life with her, to build a home and have children...except to go on this operation.
He talks of the threats people in Israel live with, the terror and the need to stop it. I will stop it, he writes to her in that last letter. On and on, the tears flow as you listen.
And in my mind, the one thought, "Please God, please, make them the last. Make them the last." I don't want to sit there on the grass next year amid tens of thousands of my neighbors. I don't want to listen to the poems and sad songs, the last letters, the father saying Kaddish for his son.
I don't want to...and I know I will. It is all we can do for them, after all they did for us.
May God bless their memory and may their families find comfort in knowing that all that we have here is because of all they have lost.
Memorial Day in Israel, 2011 - 5771.
On May 1, 1945, the death of Hitler Y”MS was announced by the BBC as follows: “Adolf Hitler has been killed at the Reich Chancery in Berlin, according to Hamburg radio.
At 2230 local time a newsreader announced that reports from the Fuhrer’s headquarters said Hitler had “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”.
On May 1, 2011, the death of Osama Bin Laden was announced by President Obama: “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a "targeted operation."
"A small team of Americans carried out the operation," Obama said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
DNA testing confirmed that it was bin Laden, sources told ABC News.
...
Sources said the attack was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command forces working with the CIA.
Last year, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to store Hizballah's incoming Iran-made Fatah-110 surface missiles and its Syrian equivalent the M-600 and the mobile SA-8 (Gecko) anti-air battery which holds 18 warheads with a maximum range of 12 kilometers. Tehran paid for the upkeep of the Hizballah hardware on Syrian side of the border after Israel threatened to bomb these potential game-changers if they crossed over.But as is always the case with all military operations, logistics is a bitch:
Deployed at Hizballah bases in Lebanon, the Fatah-110 and M-600 would place almost every corner of Israel within range of bombardment, while the SA-8 would seriously restrict Israeli Air Force operations over southern Lebanon and Galilee.
However, as the uprising against Assad rolls ever closer to Damascus, Hizballah see a very real threat of it infecting the Syrian army and has decided that now might be its last chance to get hold of the core arsenal it has standing by for war with Israel before events get out of hand in Syria.
Hizballah and Iranian offices in Tehran are working on the best way to transport the missiles into Lebanon without exposing them to Israeli attack, DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report. Some of them calculate that Israel would not venture to strike them while still on Syrian soil because it would lay itself open to interfering, or even getting in the way of, the revolt against President Assad and playing into his hands.Yup, that's true: if Syria gets attacked by the Zionist regime, it could unite enough of his people and military behind him and focus on an external enemy. But Israel can make it look like a 'work accident', and his people and military may not believe his whiny finger pointing. Alternatively, Israel can send in the fast movers once the missiles cross the Lebanese border, and take them out then. In either case, this is shaping up to be a true intelligence battle.
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