Shapiro: Obama unlikely to set Iran deadline | JPost | Israel News.

US Ambassador Dan Shapiro cautions against expecting US president to set calendar during Israel visit.

Temporary borders for Palestine and an Iranian attack.

Steve Rosen, a top official with American Israel Public Affairs Committee has predicted a Palestinian State with temporary borders and an American strike on Iran.

Steven Rosen

Speaking at a media lunch organised by The Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, Rosen said that when Obama came to power he had two international priorities…one was to try to resolve the Israeli-Palesinian conflict and the other to “come to some accommodation between the West and Islam”.

He said that there was a belief that former President George W Bush had “tried to park the Palestinian question”. According to Rosen, Obama set out to repair the damage in the US-Muslim World relations citing his famous trip and speech in Cairo but he added “the Middle East has not been kind to Barak Obama” adding that the attitude of the Muslim world is worse now than four years ago when Obama started his presidential career stating “America’s relations with the Muslim world have declined.”

Turning to the issue of the non-existent peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Rosen numbered thirteen public confrontations between Barak Obama, Joe Biden  and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the issue of the settlements.

Rosen switched his focus to the imminent visit of President Barak Obama to Israel. He said that the world was showing great interest on the impact of this visit on the Israel Palestinian issue but said that the administration did not want “to raise expectations” adding that the he is “going back at it but without the optimism”.

Steve Rosen believes that the new government being formed in Israel “opens up new possibilities” saying that the previous Israeli administration had been “the most conservative government in Israel’s history by far”. Referring to the giving back of Gaza and the introduction of rockets being fired on Tel Aviv he said that “the Israeli public has less confidence in the land for peace model” adding that the average Israeli’s attitude is that “the last line of our latest withdrawal  is the starting line of their next attack”.

He said that the new government in formation in Israel “is a different kind of government”. He mentioned the introduction to the government of the Central Left’s Yair Lapid and of the involvement of Tzipi Livni who has been promised a “special role in negotiations with the Palestinians”. He said there is now a considerable block of the Central Left within the new coalition describing them as  people who believe that some kind of political resolution with the Palestinians is in Israel’s own vital interests and that everything possible has to be done to resume Israel-Palestinian negotiations, that a Palestinian State is necessary to prevent Israel becoming a bi-national State, that Israel can live in peace with a Palestinian State if rightly negotiated.”

He went on to say that there is going to be “a renewed emphasis on the surge for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the Israeli side”.  Maintaining that Obama is well aware of this, Rosen said that they need to go back to the Palestinians and get them “to climb down from this branch that they’ve climbed on to where they are refusing to negotiate and I think you are going to witness an effort in that direction”. He mentioned John Kerry’s statement that Obama’s emphasis on the settlements had also served to drive the Israelis away from the peace table. He said the point was that “if we got the Israelis and Palestinians to settle on the borders situation there wouldn’t be an issue with the settlements.”

Rosen said that the Israelis do face  formidable problems referring to the current administration in Egypt’s attitude towards Israeli-Egyptian relations being quite different to that of former President Mubarak. He also referred to Gaza being heavily armed and “with every passing day becoming more heavily armed”. Dealing with the Palestinian Authority, Rosen said that the power of Abbas and Fayed had been heavily weakened and that Abbas had no succession plan in place and has no deputy.

With no successor in place should something happen to him, Palestinian law dictates that the Speaker of the Palestinian parliament assumes the leadership. Rosen said “The Speaker is not a particularly important guy but he is a Hamas factotum and operates under the thumb of the Hamas leadership.” According to Rosen, if anything should happen to Abbas “we would have a Hamas government in the West Bank”.

Rosen predicted that during the Obama visit: “You are going to see a serious effort to resume Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It is going to involve multi-lateral co-operation. Secretary of State Kerry will play a key role. Most of the Arab League will play a role in bringing the Palestinians to the table most importantly King Abdullah of Jordan”. Rosen believes it could produce a interim Palestinian state with temporary borders. He said that the Palestinians, the Israelis, the Quartet and the UN Security Council have already signed on to the idea of a temporary  borders”. he said that the initial talks would not deal with all the difficult question with many of them being left until the next stage.

Switching to Iran, Rosen said that in 2009 Obama had wanted to use diplomacy rather than having to deal with a military attack on a nuclear-armed Iran.  He said that instead, the Iranians have accelerated production of enriched uranium and built secret underground facilities. Rosen point out that the Iranians “have advanced centrifuges and have become more defiant in their rhetoric”.

Rosen said that recently Vice-President Joe Biden had said that President Obama is not bluffing. Biden said: “He  means it when he says we do not have a policy of containment. We have a policy of prevention and he will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” President Obama had said the same thing in the United Nations.

Accroding to Steve Rosen, President Obama is “not a pacifist” saying that the fallout from the drone attacks has not stopped him in maintaining their usage. Rosen said that President Obama is worried that the Israelis will attack Iran and this will also be on the agenda during his visit. “There is no secret that there is a lack of trust between Netanyahu and Obama”, says Rosen. The analyst said that on visits to Israel high level contacts have told him that the Israelis believe that Obama is bluffing and that Netanyahu will launch an attack on Iran soon.

Rosen believes Obama will ask Netanyahu to have more confidence in him and asks why the United States would prefer to attack Iran rather than let the Israelis do it. He answered by saying that United States have much more military power and to compare the two countries “is a joke”. But the most important issue for Rosen is that the United States “can come back a second time”. He alluded to the counter-response from the Iranians sating that you have two different lines of thought making it clear that a counter-attack against Israel is far from a counter-attack against the United States. The Israelis would lose aircraft and resources and would be stretched to the limit and would have to face world opinion. The United States on the other hand has resources to come back many times…and could hit regime targets as well as the nuclear sites.

Rosen concluded: “I believe Obama will try to persuade Netanyahu to leave the Iranian problem to him. The Unites States is a global power and Iran is a global problem.”

His conclusions: Netanyahu will sign an agreement giving a Palestinian State temporary borders  and I predict President Obama will muscle up.”

Iron Dome for Obama’s Israel landing – in case of al Qaeda, chemical attack.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 13, 2013, 7:28 AM (GMT+02:00)

Iron Dome to guard Barack Obama’s landing

 

US President  Barack Obama’s first engagement upon landing in Israel on March 20 will be a quick tour of the Iron Dome missile interceptor stationed at Ben Gurion international airport. After a round of handshakes, the officers and men operating the system will explain how it works.

The innovative counter-missile weapon is to be deployed there, not just as a spectacle to honor the US president for his contribution to its development, but out of necessity for his safety. Air Force One might be seen as fair game for the ground-to-ground missiles wielded by Al Qaeda units fighting Assad in Syria and its affiliates in the Sinai Peninsula at the very moment that the US President steps down to the strains of the IDF welcoming band.
In normal circumstances, personal security arrangements for a US presidential foreign visit are kept under close wraps and rarely visible to the public.

This time, debkafile’s counterterrorism sources report, the visit’s planners made an exception. They decided there was no option but to visibly install an Iron Dome battery inside the airport, because the first battery plus a Patriot interceptor stationed for more than two months north and south of Tel Aviv were not sufficient guarantee of security against rocket attack for President Obama’s arrival.

This decision set up two precedents:

1. Air Force One will land on the Ben Gurion airport runway on March 20 enclosed by two defensive rings of US and Israeli missile interceptors in the densest formation ever to guard an American president’s arrival in Israel.

2. The Iron Dome battery will stay in place for the three days of Obama’s visits to Israel and Jordan. It will defend Jerusalem’s air space against rocket attack for the duration of his stay.
Still fresh in Israeli memories are Hamas attempts just five months ago to hit the airport and Jerusalem with rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on the orders of the Iranian general Gen. Hassan Shateri aka Hossam Khosh-Nevis. This Iranian officer was killed in January in Syria in unknown circumstances.
No one in US and Israeli security circles is seriously suggesting that Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  Syrian ruler Bashar Assad or Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah are planning to hit the Israeli airport with rockets on March 20. But neither is any responsible official prepared to expose the president to the slightest risk.

After all, in the more than 120,000 square kilometers of the Damascus-Baghdad-Amman triangle and the 62,000 square kilometers of the Sinai Peninsula, it may be possible to find a jihadist commander willing to act on an order from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zuwahiri to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden in on May 2 two years ago in Pakistan at the hands of American commandos.

Both groups of security experts appreciate that Zuwahiri has the motive for punishing the US president for ordering his death and, for the first time, the capacity to reach him from al Qaeda-controlled territory with surface missiles loaded with poison chemicals.
Even if their weapon did not touch President Obama, it would be enough for one to explode on an Israeli or Jordanian air field at the time of his arrival for the terrorist organization to chalk up a major strategic feat.

Oliver North: Obama Admin. Has Abandoned War on Terror.

Oliver North: Obama Admin. Has Abandoned War on Terror

Share:

More . . .

A    A   |

   Email Us   |

   Print   |

   Forward Article

Iran can’t build nuke without tripping alarm bells, US says | The Times of Israel.

( Really?  Gee, so what’s everyone worrying about? – JW )

Intelligence director James Clapper says Tehran still has not decided whether to pursue militarization of nuclear program

March 12, 2013, 5:27 pm

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, right, accompanied by FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday. (photo credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran cannot enrich uranium to the point of being able to make a bomb without the international community finding out, a top US intelligence official said Tuesday while delivering an otherwise sobering report on worldwide threats.

National Intelligence director James Clapper told a Senate panel that Tehran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security and influence and “give it the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email
and never miss our top stories   Free Sign up!

But the report stopped short of saying a decision has been made.

“We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” the report said.

Clapper explained that in the last year, Iran has made progress in working toward producing weapons-grade uranium. However, the report said Iran “could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of weapons-grade uranium before this activity is discovered.”

The assessment on Iran comes shortly before President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the world has until this summer — at the latest — to keep Tehran from building a bomb. The Israeli leader repeatedly has indicated Israel is willing to strike militarily to stop Iran, a step that would likely drag in the United States.

Clapper, testifying with newly installed CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Senate Intelligence Committee, also spoke about threats emanating from Syria and North Korea.

He said that both Iran and Syria had acquired ballistic missiles from Pyongyang

In Syria, President Bashar Assad’s inability to quash the uprising in his country increases the possibility that he will use chemical weapons against his people, Clapper said.

“We assess that an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be prepared to use chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” he said. “In addition, groups or individuals in Syria could gain access to chemical weapons-related material.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence committee, described Syria as a “massive and still growing humanitarian disaster under way with no end in sight.”

The United Nations estimates more than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which started two years ago against Assad’s rule.

The report said terrorist threats are in transition with an increasingly decentralized global jihadist movement. The Arab Spring, however, has created a spike in threats to US interests in the region “that likely will endure until political upheaval stabilizes and security forces regain their capabilities.”

An unpredictable North Korea, with its nuclear weapons and missile programs, was touted as the most serious threat to the United States and East Asia nations.

The outlook on North Korea comes as the communist regime announced that it was “completely scrapping” the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has maintained peace on the peninsula for more than half a century. The Obama administration on Monday slapped new sanctions against North Korea’s primary exchange bank and several senior government officials as it expressed concern about the North’s “bellicose rhetoric.”

“The Intelligence community has long assessed that, in Pyongyang’s view, its nuclear capabilities are intended for deterrence, international prestige and coercive diplomacy. We do not know Pyongyang’s nuclear doctrine or employment concepts,” Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Although we assess with low confidence that the North would only attempt to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces or allies to preserve the Kim regime, we do not know what would constitute, from the North’s perspective, crossing that threshold.”

North Korea, led by its young leader Kim Jong Un, has defied the international community in the last three months, testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and a third nuclear bomb.

“These programs demonstrate North Korea’s commitment to develop long-range missile technology that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns,” the report said.

Report: Iran will promise UN not to seek bomb – Israel News, Ynetnews

( Cross your heart and hope to die? – JW )

Islamic Republic will make public declaration in UN stating that Tehran will never seek nuclear weapons, new report claims. Meanwhile US intelligence official says he’s unsure of Iran’s nuclear intentions

Associated Press

A news agency says Iran plans to submit a written promise to the United Nations that it will not seek nuclear weapons.

The Tuesday report by the semi-official Mehr news agency quotes Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi as saying, “Iran plans to declare in the UN that it will never go after nuclear bombs.”

Rahimi did not say when the promise would be delivered.

He charged that the Western sanctions aim to thwart Iran’s “scientific progress.” Several rounds of sanctions aimed at the nuclear program have impacted heavily on Iran’s economy.

Iran has repeatedly denied West suspicions that it is pursuing weapons construction under cover of its nuclear program.

In 2005, Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious edict “banning production, storage and use of nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, while testifying before a Senate panel on the US intelligence community’s overview of global threats US Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said that Tehran is developing nuclear capabilities to enhance its security and influence and “give it the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”

But the report stopped short of saying a decision has been made.

“We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” the report said.

Clapper explained that in the last year, Iran has made progress in working toward producing weapons-grade uranium. However, the report said Iran “could not divert safeguarded material and produce a weapon-worth of weapons-grade uranium before this activity is discovered.”

The assessment on Iran comes shortly before US President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the world has until this summer at the latest to keep Tehran from building a bomb.

The Israeli leader repeatedly has indicated Israel is willing to strike militarily to stop Iran, a step that would likely drag in the United States.

Syria, Bosnia, and the Old Mistakes | New Republic.

( My friend from Columbia College, Leon Wieselier, really hits this issue out of the park.  Leon… כל הקבוד – JW )

BY LEON WIESELTIER

“One could never have supposed that, after passing through so many trials, after being schooled by the skepticism of our times, we had so much left in our souls to be destroyed.”

Alexander Herzen wrote those words in 1848, after he witnessed the savage crackdown on the workers’ rebellion in Paris. Having been disabused by history of any illusions about the probabilities of justice, the great man was surprised to discover that he had not yet been completely disabused—that his belief in the betterment of human affairs, however mutilated by experience, was still intact; and what apprised him of his irreducible idealism was his broken heart. In 1995,

I cited Herzen’s pessimistic optimism, or optimistic pessimism, in an angry article about Bosnia and the Western failure there, and glossed the lacerating sentence this way: “They did not suppose that they had so much left in their souls to be destroyed! What basis for bitterness do those words leave us, who have witnessed atrocities of which the nineteenth century only dreamed, who have watched totalitarian slaughter give way to post-totalitarian slaughter, and the racial and tribal wars of empire give way to the racial and tribal wars of empire’s aftermath?

But bitterness is regularly refreshed . . . ” Forgive my quotation of myself, but I have been reading in the old Bosnian materials, in the writings of the reporters and the intellectuals who campaigned for American action to stop a genocide. I have been doing so because my Bosnian bitterness has been refreshed by Syria.

I am finding crushing parallels: a president who is satisfied to be a bystander, and ornaments his prevarications with high moral pronouncements; an extenuation of American passivity by appeals to insurmountable complexities and obscurities on the ground, and to ethnic and religious divisions too deep and too old to be modified by statecraft, and to ominous warnings of unanticipated consequences, as if consequences are ever all anticipated; an arms embargo against the people who require arms most, who are the victims of state power; the use of rape and torture and murder against civilians as open instruments of war; the universal knowledge of crimes against humanity and the failure of that knowledge to affect the policy-making will; the dailiness of the atrocity, its unimpeded progress, the long duration of our shame in doing nothing about it.

The parallels are not perfect, of course. Only 70,000 people have been killed in Syria, so what’s the rush? Strategically speaking, moreover, the imperative to intervene in Syria is far more considerable than the imperative to intervene in Bosnia was. Assad is the client of Iran and the patron of Hezbollah: his destruction is an American dream. But his replacement by an Al Qaeda regime is an American nightmare, and our incomprehensible refusal to arm the Syrian rebels who oppose Al Qaeda even as they oppose Assad will have the effect of bringing the nightmare to pass. Secretary of State Kerry seems to desire a new Syrian policy, but he is busily giving our side in the conflict—if we are to have a side by the time this is over—everything but what it really needs.

We must mark an anniversary. It has been two years since fifteen teenagers in the town of Dara’a scrawled “the people want the regime to fall” on the wall of a school, and were arrested and then tortured for their temerity. The protest that erupted in Dara’a, in the area in front of a mosque that was dubbed “Dignity Square,” was a democratic rebellion, and it swiftly spread. In Dara’a it was met by a crackdown whose brutalities were documented in an unforgettably chilling report by Human Rights Watch a few months later.

Dissolve now to Aleppo in ruins, where the dictator is hurling ballistic missiles at his own population. Two years.

The Obama administration may as well not have existed.

Though two years into the Bosnian genocide Bill Clinton was still more than a year away from bestirring himself morally and militarily, so what’s the rush? Clinton acted after the massacre at Srebrenica. But Syria has already had its Srebrenicas, and Obama is still elaborate and unmoved. He also worries about a Russian response to American action, when Putin’s obstructionism in fact perfectly suits Obama’s preference for American inaction.

People around the White House tell me that Syria is agonizing for him. So what? It is hard to admire the agony of the bystander, especially if the bystander has the capability to act against the horror. Obama likes to drape himself in Lincoln’s language, so he should ponder these words, from the Annual Message to Congress in 1862: “We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” Obama wants the power but not the responsibility. Unfortunately for him, the one brings the other.

Not even the advent of Barack Obama can abrogate what was learned in Bosnia in the antiquity of the twentieth century: that in the case of moral emergencies, those with the ability to act have the duty to act; that even justified action is attended by uncertainty; that military force can do good as well as evil, and that war is not the only, or the worst, evil; that the withdrawal of the United States from global leadership is an invitation to tyranny and inhumanity; that American foreign policy must be animated by principle as well by prudence, though there is nothing historically imprudent about setting oneself resolutely on the side of decency and democracy.

“How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” Obama recently told this magazine, as an example of how he “wrestle[s]” with the problem. Do not be fooled. It is not wrestling. It is casuistry. He has no intention of coming to the assistance of Congo, either. Obama is a strong cosmopolitan but a weak internationalist. And he is, with his inclination to disinvolvement, and his almost clinical confidence in his own sagacity, implicating us in a disgrace, even we here.

The Golan and the coming troubles – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Analysis: UN may leave Golan Heights amid sharp increase in violence along Israel-Syria border

Riccardo Dugulin

The situation on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights is quickly spiraling toward a hardly containable power vacuum which is likely to lead to an increased degree of instability region wide and to an augmentation of the attacks against Israel. The most recent sign of this ongoing destabilization has been shown when 21 UN Filipino unarmed peacekeepers were taken hostage by Syrian rebels. This unprecedented act of violence against non-armed personnel is instrumental in underlying a number of factors which will influence the future security environment in Israel’s northern regions.

The Syrian civil and proxy war has become a war of attrition between government forces and a nebulous network of foreign sponsored and at times competing rebel groups. This reality led the regime to optimize the use of its armed forces, thus leaving regions such as the border with Israel weakly garrisoned. The rise of pro-regime militias backed by Hezbollah is a likely response to these developments.

Such a strategic shift creates an imbalance of force in areas which are strategic for Israel’s defense. The multiplication of anti-regime armed groups, some of which are substantially close to al-Qaeda in tactics and ideology, is making it impossible to have a single entity in control of the Syrian territory, especially over key regions such as the Israeli border.

The steep increase of violence in this area along with allegations of malpractice being raised against UN peacekeepers is bringing the UN disengagement from the Golan Heights closer to reality. This would mean that the Israeli Defense Forces would be the only regular army in control of a part of a border region that the Jewish state and various terrorist and insurgent groups are struggling to control. The pledged help by the US and Arab States to the Syrian rebels effectively means that the Syrian armed forces will not regain power over those contended regions. This may lead to two different scenarios, none of which have a positive outcome for Israel or the international community.

The first one consists of a gradual takeover of the Syrian side of the Golan Heights by Hezbollah. The Shi’a terrorist organization has acquired in the last years an advanced offensive and defensive arsenal and tactical expertise. It has been engaged in the Syrian conflict in combat and logistical operations for almost a year and a half and has direct access to Iranian support and intelligence.

The regime would benefit from such a move as it would clamp down a sizeable number of rebel forces while leaving Assad’s forces for other places in the country. This would have catastrophic effects on Israel’s security calculus as it would mean that Hezbollah acquires a new border with Israel from which it could position its medium range ballistic missiles to target Israeli civilians. In addition to that Hezbollah’s control of the region would limit the transit Assad and Iranian weapons would need to undergo to arrive into the Lebanese terrorist organization.

Rebels who captured UN troops near border (Photo: AFP, YouTube)

The second possibility is that with the demise of Syrian regular forces in the area, a number of different rebel groups will share influence over the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The possibility that groups closer to al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist organizations will gain control of strategic communication nodes is high. Due to their sponsor and their tactical expertise these terrorist networks are already having the upper hand against regime forces and rival groups in almost the majority of the engagements they participate in.

The takeover of the Syrian border with Israel by fundamentalist Sunni terrorist organizations would lead to a growth of terrorist attacks – or at least attempts – against Israeli targets. In fact, with an increased Hezbollah presence, the balance of power may be altered, but a full blown conflict may be diverted, when on the other hand to gain and maintain legitimacy and popular support jihadi groups would need to step up their terrorist campaign against the Jewish state. Their relatively lower offensive capabilities would result in Hamas-like terrorist attacks mainly centered on the use of inaccurate artillery and rocket barrages as well as suicide bombings. Regardless of the fact that, thanks to well tested defensive capabilities, Israel could minimize civilian causalities, this scenario would not be a sustainable one and in the medium term it makes Israeli cross border actions necessary. These actions may be highly compromised by the volatile situation in Syria.

The likelihood that, while retreating or losing ground, Syrian regime forces try to gain popular support by engaging Israeli targets remains low. The fact that the regime did not respond to Israel’s alleged strike inside its territory may be taken as an indicator that Assad does not want to risk the certain loss of men and material in any kind of adventurous attempt to expand the conflict toward Israel.

Because of this scenario, international commentators, analysts and policy makers should look at the evolving situation in the Golan with increased attention as the Syrian implosion raises the probability of regional conflict.

Riccardo Dugulin holds a Master degree from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po) and is specialized in International Security. He is currently working in Paris for a Medical and Security Assistance company. He has worked for a number of leading think tanks in Washington DC, Dubai and Beirut. Personal website: www.riccardodugulin.com

2nd Generation Sky Rider.

Moriya Ben-Yosef

11/3/2013

A new and improved version of the Sky Rider UAV is expected to enter operational use in the IDF. The UAV, which is intended to be used by soldiers in the field, is equipped with payloads that make it possible to receive real-time battlefield pictures.

The new Sky Rider model, which was developed by the Ground Technological Division and the Ground Forces Weapons Department and is supplied by Elbit Systems, underwent final test stages last month and is meant to enter operational activity this month.

“This is an improvement of the existing system,” says a source connected to the project. “The aircraft itself has slightly increased, and it is a little heavier – it previously weighed approximately 6.5 kilograms and now it weighs 7 kilograms. Ailerons were added to the  UAV, which have improved its airworthiness and its handling of winds and weather conditions, and many things pertaining to flight reliability have been improved.

“In addition, it now includes a night payload with continuous zoo, when there was a need to transition between the narrow and broad fields in the past. The ground system has also been changed, and there is now a tremendous improvement in the user interface. The communication allows for greater operational flexibility, both with regards to ranges as well as with regards to controlling several UAVs at once.”

The Sky Rider unit in the IDF Artillery Corps has been operating in recent years close to the various forces deployed in different sectors, providing a real-time intelligence picture. The integration of the new model in the field is expected to provide technological operational advantages, and the Ground Forces hope that in the future, every battalion will have a Sky Rider team to assist with field activities.

Fundamentally Freund: When Christians repent | JPost | Israel News.