(En - 28 Dec 2014 - Actu) Drones : la filière israélienne marque des points à l’export

Premier exportateur de drones devant les Etats-Unis, Israël continue de remporter de jolis succès à l’étranger, malgré un environnement plus concurrentiel. Voilà une dizaine de jours, l’agence d’armement de la Corée du Sud a annoncé son intention d’acquérir trois drones Heron du champion national, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), pour répondre à ses besoins sécuritaires. Une commande estimée à 36,5 millions de dollars (30 millions d’euros).

Séoul avait déjà fait affaire avec le groupe israélien pour se doter d’avions sans pilote de type Searcher, mais il s’agirait de son premier achat de drones MALE (moyenne altitude longue endurance). Et du vingtième marché à l’export, pour le système Heron, le produit best-seller de la division MALAT (avions sans pilote d’IAI), qui a servi de base au drone Harfang en service en France.

 

Pionnier du secteur, le fabricant n’est pas le seul groupe israélien à continuer de marquer des points. En juin, c’était au tour du Département de la défense suisse de faire savoir qu’il avait retenu le drone MALE Hermes 900 construit par l’entreprise de Haïfa, Elbit Systems.

 

Un contrat évalué à 250 millions de francs suisses (205 millions d’euros). Dans le cadre du programme d’acquisition d’armes 2015, ces drones de reconnaissance non armés remplaceront d’ici à 2020 les drones ADS 95 Ranger utilisés par les forces armées suisses depuis 2001. Ils étaient en compétition avec les Super Heron d’Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

 

Deux exemples parmi d’autres de la vitalité de la filière drone israélienne. Cette industrie a totalisé 4,6 milliards de ventes à l’international, entre 2015 et 2012, selon une étude de cabinet Frost & Sullivan, ce qui la classe au premier rang mondial devant les Etats-Unis (2,9 milliards de dollars), très orientés vers leur marché domestique. Pour autant, l’Etat hébreu doit lutter pour garder son avance historique.

 

L’an passé, plusieurs pays européens – dont la France – ont préféré acquérir des avions sans pilote américains Reaper (General Atomics) pour le renouvellement de leur flotte de drones stratégiques. Plutôt que de se fournir en Heron TP, le dernier né d’IAI, qui n’a pas encore trouvé son premier client à l’export.

 

Au sein de la firme israélienne, on tente toutefois de minimiser cette déconvenue. «  Peu de pays peuvent se permettre de s’offrir un système de drone stratégique  », glisse un responsable. D’autant qu’IAI n’a pas totalement renoncé au marché français. Le groupe israélien tente en effet de rentrer dans la compétition française « restreinte » pour le futur système de drone tactique organisée par la DGA, qui comprend les offres de Thales et Sagem.

 

Associé à l’industriel français Latécoère, il a soumis une proposition non sollicitée qui s’appuie sur le drone Pelerin, un dérivé du Heron, répondant aux besoins de l’armée de terre. Mais la partie s’annonce d’autant plus difficile, sur ce marché très concurrentiel, que le groupe israélien doit trouver un mandataire tricolore.

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(En - 28 Dec 2014 - News) 38 female IAF pilots shatter the glass firmament

Over the past 20 years, ever since Alice Miller broke the gender barrier by petitioning the Supreme Court for the right to enlist in the Israel Air Force’s prestigious flight school course, a total of 38 women have received pilots’ wings, the army weekly Bamahane reported.

Half of the graduates are combat aviators — with 16 combat navigators, three combat pilots, seven helicopter pilots, and 12 cargo pilots and navigators, including a deputy squadron commander.

The Defense Ministry and Israel Defense Forces initially rejected Miller’s request to enlist in the course in 1993 “not because she is a woman,” Maj. Gen. Herzl Bodinger — the commander of the IAF at the time — wrote in an affidavit, “but mainly because her anticipated length of service [placing an emphasis on reserve duty] is inconsistent with the army’s preconditions for the training of a member of an air crew.”

 

That same year, president Ezer Weizman, a former air force commander, was far more blunt about the basis for the long-standing gender exclusion. “Meidele,” he reportedly told Miller — using a Yiddish word for “young lady” — “have you ever seen a man sewing a pair of socks?” To boot, Weizman claimed that “women are incapable of withstanding the pressures placed on a fighter pilot.”

The court disagreed. It ruled in a 3-2 decision that “closing the aviation course to women violates their dignity and degrades them. It also, albeit unintentionally, provides support for the degrading slogan: ‘The best men for the air force, and the best women for its pilots.’” 

 

Miller, an officer who had a civilian’s pilot license and was serving in the academic reserves at the time, was allowed to try out for the army’s most elite course, but was deemed unfit.

Although the pre-state Yishuv trained female pilots, some of whom flew missions in the War of Independence and the 1956 Suez War, Sheri Rahat, an F-16 combat navigator, became, in 1998, the first female graduate in nearly five decades. Three years later, Roni Zuckerman, a granddaughter of Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman, two leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, graduated as the first combat pilot.

 

Nonetheless, IAF officers told the army weekly that it is still hard to typify the female pilot. “I feel that still today, 20 years later, we do not know how to characterize the profile of the female pilot as we do that of the male pilot,” said Maj. Racheli Weinberg, the head of a unit that seeks out potential air crew enlistees. “The evolution of it is much slower, and not enough time has elapsed to make it researchable, which is why we are looking to pass through our ‘strainer’ as many women as possible in order to understand the characteristics of the female Israeli Air Force pilot.”

 

The most recent course, which began in July, was comprised of a mere seven percent women, a figure that the army seeks to increase by lifting all limitations on the initial screening process, which was, until recently, geared more toward male candidates.

 

Thus far, roughly 10 percent of the women who have begun the course have completed it —  a figure that is very similar, if not better, than that of the male gender.
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(Fr - 28 Dec 2014 - Vidéo) David Sebban présente le nouvel aéroport international d’Israël qui ouvrira en 2017 !

Nous sommes au Nord d’Eilat, près de Timna. Ici le futur aéroport international d’Israël verra le jour il portera le nom d’Ilan et Assaf Ramon. L’aménagement de cet aéroport n’est bien sûr, pas terminé, mais on peut déjà apercevoir les deux pistes parallèles et toutes les infrastructures nécessaires à un aéroport international.

Le coût pour le contribuable israélien, 1 milliard 700 millions de shekels, pour 30 000 mètres carrés de superficie livrable fin 2016. Il desservira la ville d’Eilat et servira de en cas de coup dur, d’aéroport supplétif au terminal  Ben Gourion près de Tel-Aviv.
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(En - 17 Dec 2014 - News) Defense Ministry zigzags over 'Arrow 3' test launch failure

 

Israel's upgraded Arrow 3 ballistic missile only partially passed its first live interception test on Tuesday, a fact the Defense Ministry attempted to conceal until questions and foreign reports surfaced stating that the test was not successful.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry initially said that "within the framework of preparations for a future interception test, a target missile was launched and carried out its trajectory successfully."

The ministry excluded the fact that as opposed to the original plan, operators of the Arrow 3 battery at Palmahim air base on the Mediterranean coast canceled the launch after the interceptor missile failed to lock on to a target missile fired over the Mediterranean.

Asked whether Tuesday's trial had been intended as a full interception that had failed, a Defense Ministry spokesman initially provided no immediate comment.

Only later did the ministry issue a statement saying that "the conditions for the interceptor launch never materialized."

"There was a countdown to the launch, and then nothing happened," one source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "A decision was made not to waste the interceptor missile."

Arrow is among several elements of an integrated Israeli aerial shield built up to withstand potential future missile and rocket attacks by Iran, Syria or their terrorist allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Arrow 3 interceptors are designed to fly above the earth's atmosphere, where their warheads detach to become "kill vehicles" that track and slam into the targets. Such high-altitude shoot-downs are meant to safely destroy incoming nuclear, biological or chemical missiles.

Arrow is jointly developed by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and U.S. firm Boeing Co. Its earlier version, Arrow 2, was deployed more than a decade ago and officials put its success rate in trials at around 90 percent.

But an Arrow 2 interception test on Sept. 9 ended inconclusively, according to the Defense Ministry. The U.S. journal Defense News later reported that the Arrow 2 interceptor missile missed its target.

A senior official in the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (Mafat), a joint administrative body of the Defense Ministry and IDF that coordinates between the various military industry companies and subsidiaries, spoke to reporters and said the interceptor missile was supposed to launch only if certain conditions were met. He called the decision not to launch the Arrow 3 interceptor "clear-headed."

The official added: "This isn't a success and it isn't a failure, rather a 'no-test' situation. This isn't the first or last time all the conditions for a test launch are not met."

The Defense Ministry declined to detail which conditions for a proper test launch failed to materialize. However, the senior Mafat official said the first phase of the test, which included the launch of the target missile and the tracking of its trajectory by the Arrow 3 system, was a success.

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(En - 12 Dec 14 - News) EL AL named noisiest airline at Heathrow

 

Israel’s national carrier, El Al, has been revealed as the noisiest at Heathrow and has received a stern warning letter from the airport’s chief executive.

The landing-noise scores, published for the period July-September 2014, shows El Al now props up the league table, replacing Polish airline LOT as west London’s worst offender.

Among the factors in which El Al received a ‘red rating’ was continuous descent approach (CDA), in which aircraft maintain a steady angle of approach when landing, rather than prolonged periods of level flight.

Quietest over the same period were the domestic and short-haul operations of British Airways, Virgin and Ireland’s Aer Lingus.

The airport’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said he had “written to those airlines failing to meet Heathrow’s CDA standards, asking for engagement from their technical teams with the airport to increase CDA adherence”.
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(En - 12 Dec 2014 - Feedback) Four Israeli F-15s Dodged Syrian Missile Fire to Attack Urgent Targets

 

On Dec. 7, the Israeli air force carried out a series of surgical air strikes inside Syria. Such strikes are not uncommon in Syria and Lebanon—the Israelis frequently attack convoys carrying weapons to Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and to and degrade Syrian regime forces in southwestern Syria.

But the Dec. 7 strike was fairly unique. For one, much of the air raid was captured on camera. And the video and photographic evidence reveals some very interesting Israeli tactics.

 

Two formation of Israeli fighter jets, each consisting of two F-15s, entered Syrian airspace at 1600 local time from the direction of Lebanon, heading from west to east toward Damascus at very high altitude and high speed.

 

The wide spacing between the Israeli jets—both within each two-ship formation and between the two separate pairs—is noteworthy. There’s a good probable cause for this arrangement.

Israeli fighters almost definitely were using electronic jamming to prevent Syrian air defense radars from tracking them at long distance. Russian-made air defense systems, including those in Syria’s possession, include specific means of countering sophisticated enemy jamming.

In the absence of passive radars and an integrated air defense network, Syrian systems could probably still track the azimuth and elevation of incoming jamming signals via their own receivers—albeit with a considerable error margin.

 

That data could cue Syrian missile batteries’ optical sensors and allow the operators to fire toward the intruders. The spacing between the Israeli F-15s made the error margins overlap and thus made the Syrians’ direction-finding even less accurate, buying valuable time for the planes to get close to their targets.

 

At right—the F-15s’ contrails are at left. The contrails on the right are from Buk missiles. At top—Israeli air force F-15Isl

Even under heavy jamming, Syrian Buk-M2 missile batteries stationed at Mezzeh airport managed to fire two missiles toward the first formation. The Israelis responded with a simple move—they changed direction.

 

In long-distance shots, medium-range surface-to-air missiles predict a point of impact ahead of incoming aircraft and travel a ballistic trajectory to reach that point. In the last phase of flight, the missile would correct its trajectory using its seeker. A significant change in the target’s direction would mean that the missile would not find the aircraft in the predicted zone.

 

The first formation of F-15s drew the Syrian missiles toward themselves then turned toward north and released their weapons, striking a small airstrip called Al Sharai in Dimas region west of Damascus. The first formation then made a hard turn to the west and returned to Lebanese skies.

Not far behind, the second formation had already entered Syria.

The pair of F-15s approached Damascus head on—this time the Buk-M2 battery apparently waited for the intruders to change their direction or close in.

 

The Israeli F-15s released their standoff weapons and made a hard left turn toward the south. Two more Syrian missiles snaked into the sky—the contrails indicating SA-3s. These missiles weren’t aiming for Israeli jets but for the missiles they had fired.

 

One of the SA-3s hit its target. The wreckage of a Popeye guided missile fell to the ground. The Popeye is a stand-off missile with a warhead weighing 700 pounds. It uses combination of infrared imagery and inertial guidance to precisely attack targets up to 50 miles away from the launch point.

 

The wreckage of the Popeye missile.

The surviving missiles from the second pair of F-15s struck vehicles and supplies on a ramp at Damascus’ international airport.

 

It’s interesting that the Israelis used Popeyes. The Israeli air force also possesses the more modern Spice guided weapons that use a combination of GPS and laser guidance.

 

Lebanese media, including Al Menar TV, reported Israeli jets—probably a reserve force—circling over Lebanon for approximately 30 minutes after the attack, possibly waiting to attack again, if any targets survived.

 

Israeli fighters carried out a daring mission in broad daylight. The inclusion of Popeye missiles betrays the mobile nature of the targets. Whatever they were, it’s possible they were ready to leave the two airports and scatter in different directions.

 

The raid was a success for Israel, but it was also risky. An ambush by a lone missile site near the border or a few short-range missiles or guns could have turned the Israeli victory into a defeat.