Armor-Piercing Grenade Hitting US Troops

Here’s an interesting – and disturbing – report from CBS news on a new weapon being used against US troops in Iraq: Russian-made armor-piercing hand grenades. I've never heard of these before, but I'd be interested to hear what DT readers know about them.

-- Christian

F-16 Shoot-down Mystery

Well it looks like the most recent F-16 crash might not have anything to do with camel spiders, but something much more serious.

Tactical Report blog reports that there are indications the F-16 that crashed four days ago was shot down. This is a disturbing development if true, since the U.S. military had seemingly gotten its arms around the spate of crashes and shoot-downs of helicopters.

The indication that the shoot-down occurred during the aircraft’s takeoff is also alarming because it points to the possibility that MANPAD teams are able to get close enough to U.S. air bases to launch in the opening moments of an aircraft’s flight.

The Tactical Report article follows:

Another US F-16 aircraft crashed on 15/7/07 during takeoff at Balad air base, 80 kilometers north of Baghdad. This was the second F-16 aircraft crash in just a month, as a crash had taken place on 15/6/07 shortly after taking off from the same base.

While the pilot of the first crash was killed, the pilot of the second one survived. But what caused both crashes remains under investigations by the US Air Force.

Reports from Baghdad suggest that hostile fire caused both crashes.

According to these reports, it is not just a coincidence that both aircraft crashed during takeoff.

Circles close to the Iraqi Defense Ministry suspect that a shoulder-held anti-aircraft missile might have been fired at both aircraft from an area not far from the air base.

These circles add that it is too difficult for any aircraft to maneuver and avoid a missile during takeoff.

According to these circles, the Iraqi insurgency has different types of anti-aircraft missiles, including SAM-7, SAM-8 and SAM-11, which can hit an aircraft during taking off or flying at low altitude.

UPDATE: Astute readers pointed out that while the SA-7 is a MANPAD, the others listed are not. It would be pretty unlikely for the USAF to not notice a truck-mounted system parked close by its air field, which casts even more doubt on the authenticity of this report. But it's still worth keeping and eye on what MNF-I determines might have been the cause of the crashes.

(Gouge: NC)

-- Christian

Dirty Bomb? Grab a Llama

The current issue of The American Legion magazine has an interesting tidbit about how "an unusual protein found in the blood of llamas has enabled scientists to deveop a quick, simple method for making anibodies that could be used in a new generation of bio sensors that could help detect deliberate environmental contamination, such a bioterrorism."

According to the article, researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory say that llamas are among certain animals that produce "heavy chain antibodies" from which "single-domain antibodies" can be isolated by genetic engineering. Camels and sharks also produce the same antibody but you seldom see either of those in a petting zoo, do you?

NRL researchers claim to have used single-domain antibodies to combat a smallpox virus surrogate, cholera toxin, along with other biothreats.

-- Ward

How Israel's Drones Fought the War, Part II

Israeli military chiefs are being taken out to the woodshed for relying on airpower during the summer campaign in Lebanon. "But after-action data and battlefield imagery are revealing great advances in the ability to respond to asymmetric threats," says Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome. Thanks largely to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), "more than 90 percent of the medium-range missile launchers used by Hizbollah were destroyed almost immediately after they fired their first weapon."

By the third night [of the war], the IAF [Israeli Air Force] attained full operational capability of the world’s first Boost Phase Launch Intercept (BPLI) force [maybe it's more of a "a search and destroy operation," as Bill noted in the comments -- ed.] a tightly linked network of manned aircraft and UAVs that saturated the airspace to hunt and immediately kill small, mobile, medium-range missile launchers.

It didn't work against the terror group's teeny-tiny Katyusha rockets. But Israel’s BPLI capability did managed to knock out "more than 100 launchers during the more-than month-long war." UAVs "like the Elbit Hermes 450S Zik, the Shoval (Heron-1/Crusher) and Searcher-2 built by Israel Aircraft Industries" did the lion's share of the work.

“This was the first large-scale use of UAVs, not only for providing a continuous presence over the entire battle area, but in [assisting the direction and delivery of] smart munitions to these very small, well hidden, moving targets,” said Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired IAF major general and former director of Israeli defense research and development...

“This is not like a targeted killing where we have two weeks to plan,” Ben-Israel said. “Here, there’s only a matter of seconds between the time the terrorists emerged to launch these missiles to the time when they returned to their hiding places among innocent civilians. Those medium-range missile launchers became suicide launchers. They were destroyed either before or immediately after they fired their first missile.”

The Israeli Air Force also got better about detecting -- and taking out -- Hezbollah drones. By tweaking "multiple radars never designed to detect such small, slow-moving, pinpoint targets.... F-16C fighter pilots on air patrol [were able] to blast the [unmanned] offenders from Israeli and Lebanese skies with Python-5 dogfighting missiles."

According to Israeli military data, Hizbollah launched four Iranian-made Ababil UAVs during the war. One apparently exploded upon launch; another penetrated Israeli airspace, but crashed just south of the Lebanon border; and the other two were downed over the sea southwest of Haifa and near the area of Tzur in southern Lebanon.

Remnants of the downed drones showed that at least one was equipped with nearly 10 kilograms of explosives, which Israeli intelligence sources believe was destined for Tel Aviv. According to officials here, the UAV that crashed upon launch may have carried a payload of up to 50 kilograms.

Examination of cockpit imagery from one of the engagements shows detection of the target at extremely short range — close enough for the pilot to actually see the UAV. From an extraordinarily low altitude of less than 2,000 feet and at very low speed, the pilot launched his Python-5, which immediately arched and locked on to its target. Imagery shows the missile maneuvering at nearly 90 degrees for a matter of seconds before blasting the gnat-sized target with its explosive warhead.

“This is an historic first for us, and professionals will understand how complicated the mission is. It’s not the classic engagement of an F-16 versus a MiG, where you have a competing aircraft and radar. In this scenario, it’s not plane against plane, but rather network against an asymmetrical target you can barely see,” said the senior IAF official.

Hez Hacked Israeli Radios

This is downright shocking, if true. "Hezbollah guerrillas were able to hack into Israeli radio communications during last month's battles in south Lebanon, an intelligence breakthrough that helped them thwart Israeli tank assaults," Newsday reports.

Using technology most likely supplied by Iran, special Hezbollah teams monitored the constantly changing radio frequencies of Israeli troops on the ground. That gave guerrillas a picture of Israeli movements, casualty reports and supply routes. It also allowed Hezbollah anti-tank units to more effectively target advancing Israeli armor, according to the officials...

The Israeli military refused to comment on whether its radio communications were compromised, citing security concerns. But a former Israeli general, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah's ability to secretly hack into military transmissions had "disastrous" consequences for the Israeli offensive...

Like most modern militaries, Israeli forces use a practice known as "frequency-hopping" - rapidly switching among dozens of frequencies per second - to prevent radio messages from being jammed or intercepted. It also uses encryption devices to make it difficult for enemy forces to decipher transmissions even if they are intercepted. The Israelis mostly rely on a U.S.-designed communication system called the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System...

With frequency-hopping and encryption, most radio communications become very difficult to hack. But troops in the battlefield sometimes make mistakes in following secure radio procedures and can give an enemy a way to break into the frequency-hopping patterns. That might have happened during some battles between Israel and Hezbollah, according to the Lebanese official. Hezbollah teams likely also had sophisticated reconnaissance devices that could intercept radio signals even while they were frequency-hopping.

During one raid in southern Lebanon, Israeli special forces said they found a Hezbollah office equipped with jamming and eavesdropping devices.

It was my impression that this kind of signal interception was really, really hard to do -- especially for an irregular force like Hezbollah. I know there are some radio and commsec gurus who read the site regularly. Weigh in here, guys.

Or maybe the article itself contains the seed of what actually happened. "Besides radio transmissions, the official said Hezbollah also monitored cell phone calls among Israeli troops," Newsday notes. A raided Hezbollah base had list of "cell phone numbers for Israeli commanders."

Cells are, of course, way easier to intercept. "Israeli forces were under strict orders not to divulge sensitive information over the phone." But maybe they talked anyway. Maybe they thought Hezbollah would never be sophisticated enough to grab their calls.

UPDATE 3:25 PM: Weeks ago, the Times of London and Asia Times had hints of this.

Apparently using techniques learnt from their paymasters in Iran, they were even able to crack the codes and follow the fast-changing frequencies of Israeli radio communications, intercepting reports of the casualties they had inflicted again and again. This enabled them to dominate the media war by announcing Israeli fatalities first.

“They monitored our secure radio communications in the most professional way,” one Israeli officer admitted. “When we lose a man, the fighting unit immediately gives the location and the number back to headquarters. What Hezbollah did was to monitor our radio and immediately send it to their Al-Manar TV, which broadcast it almost live, long before the official Israeli radio.”

(Big ups: JQP, /.)

Hezbollah, Deadly Hybrid

We've hinted at this a couple of times since the fight between Israel and Hezbollah began. But the terror group, "with the sophistication of a national army... and the lethal invisibility of a guerrilla army" is a new breed of military animal. "A hybrid," Thom Shanker writes. "Old labels, and old planning, do not apply."

Hezbollah still possesses the most dangerous aspects of a shadowy terror network. It abides by no laws of war as it attacks civilians indiscriminately. Attacks on its positions carry a high risk of killing innocents. At the same time, it has attained military capabilities and other significant attributes of a nation-state. It holds territory and seats in the Lebanese government. It fields high-tech weapons and possesses the firepower to threaten the entire population of a regional superpower, or at least those in the northern half of Israel....

"We are in a world today where we have a non-state actor using all the tools of weaponry," from drone aircraft to rockets to computer hacking, said P.W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in the impact of new technologies on national security.

But John Robb, who's been examining this kind of "open source warfare" for years, says that "the central secret to Hezbollah's success" isn't in its weaponry. It's in the terrorists' ability to have its "guerrillas to make decisions autonomously... at the small group level."

In every area -- from firing rockets to defending prepared positions... -- we have examples of Hezbollah teams deciding, adapting, innovating, and collaborating without reference to any central authority. The result of this decentralization is that Hezbollah's aggregate decision cycles are faster and qualitatively better than those of their Israeli counterparts... the continued success of its efforts has put the Israelis on the horns of a dilemma: either request a ceasefire or push for a full invasion of southern Lebanon (each fraught with disastrous consequences).

And not just for Israel. "Other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes," Shanker notes. Iraqi insurgents are showing a similar blend of operational flexibility and modern technology. To beat these groups, the U.S. is going to have to learn that it "takes a network to fight a network."

American intelligence agencies and the military proved it can fight this kind of war, as it did in Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda, when intelligence officers and small groups of Army Special Forces worked with local fighters to call in devastating air strikes and drive the Taliban from power.

Within the Bush administration and across the military, a clearer view is emerging out of the chaos in southern Lebanon. It is that nation-states know they cannot directly take on superpowers — either regional or global — without getting their clocks cleaned, and so they use proxies they train and support to take the fight to those superpowers. The fight against groups like Hezbollah requires a strategy for dealing with their sponsors. These networks, Hezbollah included, don’t float around in the ether like free electrons bumping into each other. They alight. They attach themselves to territory. In Afghanistan it was with the full support of the Taliban. In Pakistan, it’s an ungoverned space. In Lebanon, it’s a state within a state. Cut off state support, or eliminate the ability of the networks to survive in ungoverned areas, and they collapse on themselves.

No solution has been written. But it would include military force along with diplomacy, economic assistance, intelligence and information campaigns.

"Most critically, we have to get better at — it’s such a cliché — winning hearts and minds," said a military officer working on counterinsurgency issues. "That is influencing neutral populations toward supporting us and not supporting our terrorist and insurgent enemies."

And so the zillion-dollar question becomes: Do big air campaigns and large-scale invasions really influence those opinions in a positive way? Or do they just play into the terrorists' hands?

UPDATE 07/31/06 4:07 PM: Anthony Cordesman's answer: The U.S. -- and Israel's -- current course is "stupid, incompetent, and obsolete." Youch.

Hez's 30-Mile Missile

Here's some more on those longer-range Hezbollah rockets mentioned in today's Rapid Fire:

Hezbollah called the rockets the Khaibar-1. They fell more than 30 miles south of the Lebanese border. A few other rockets have traveled this far, but it was still unusual, according to the Israeli military and police.

The rockets are capable of carrying more than 200 pounds of explosives, making them much more powerful than the Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah has been firing most of the time, Israeli authorities said.

American and Israeli officials believe that the rocket Hezbollah referred to as a "Khaibar-1" appears to be an upgraded version of the Fajr-3, a rocket that Iran has supplied to the terrorist network and that Hezbollah has used often during the conflict. The rocket fired today has an estimated range of 90 kilometers, which makes it the longest range rocket fired thus far. Officials said that it is still unclear whether the rocket is actually a Fajr-5 — which Iran has also given to Hezbollah — or a new model altogether. [The Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews both argue differently -- ed.] Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said earlier in the week that his Shiite group would strike beyond Haifa, about 20 miles inside Israel, which has been the southernmost city to come under regular attack.

One thing the weapon was not, according to Israeli authorities, was "an Iranian-made 'Zilzal' rocket, which has a range of about 210 km (130 miles) and would have put the Israeli commercial capital Tel Aviv within reach."

That honeymoon is looking less and less likely, all of the time...

(Big ups: SOI)

Hezbollah's Surprise Weapons

Wonder why the Israelis thought their ship had been hit by a drone last week -- when it turned out to be a radar-guided missile instead? Or why the crew of the Hanit corvette didn't use their countermeasures to protect themselves? Simple: the Sabras knew that Hezbollah had been playing with drones; they had no idea that the terrorist group had such a sophisticated missile in their arsenal. It's one of a number of ways that the "power and sophistication" of Hezbollah's arms "has caught the United States and Israel off guard," the Times reports. "Officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria."

The missile that hit the Hanit was a C-802, an Iranian-made variant of a stealthy, turbojet-powered, Chinese weapon. It's "considered along with the US 'Harpoon' as among the best anti-ship missiles" in the world, GlobalSecurity.org says.

"Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s," the Times notes. "Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah."

Now that the Israelis know, it's influencing their choice of targets to hit. The C-802 was most likely "fired it from a truck-mounted launcher cued by a coastal radar installation," Situational Awareness says. So "Israel has stepped up its attacks against coastal radar sites, as any sort of surface-search set would be able to provide data for the initial launch."

After launch, the missile takes care of itself with its own inertial guidance system and onboard radar seeker. Since the launchers are mobile, the trucks carrying them could scoot after firing. And we all know how notoriously difficult it can be to locate mobile units, even when you have lots of reconnaissance assets.

The terrorists' more traditional weapons, like Katyusha rockets and Fajr-3 missiles, have contained surprises, too. "In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty," one unnammed official told the paper. "Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past."

70 Katyushas were fired at Israel "within the space of an hour" on Wednesday afternoon, Ha'Aretz writes. Israel is responding by sending small group of ground troops into Lebanon, and by striking targets in Beruit -- including ones in the Christian part of town.

The Times says that "while Iranian missile supplies to Hezbollah, either by sea or overland via Syria, were well known, officials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria."

Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology.

"We’ve never seen anything like this," said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.

Conflicts Forum's Mark Perry, on the other hand, isn't as alarmed as most about Hezbollah's weaponry. {Joe Katzman says that's because the guy is a terrorist shill.} Perry declares that the militia only has a handful of sophisticated and long-range missiles. Check out his All Things Considered interview here.

UPDATE 1:43 PM: "Israeli military officials have warned that the next Palestinian uprising could be 'a ballistic intifada,'" the Washington Post reports.

(Big ups: Umansky)

UPDATE 7:13 PM: The Jerusalem Post is reporting that "IAF fighter jets dropped over 20 tons in bombs late Wednesday night on a Hizbullah bunker, possibly the hiding place of the group's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in the Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp in southeast Beirut. It was still unclear who was in the bunker at the time and what their fate was, but IDF sources said the bunker was totally destroyed and that all that was left was a crater."

Hezbollah's Biggest Missile Yet

Watching the news over the last few years, we've grown accustomed to seeing terrorists as a low-tech threat -- guys who hijack airplanes with pocket knives and make bombs out of leftover parts. And that threat has been plenty scary, on its own.

But in recent days, we're starting to see what happens when Islamic extremists get their hands on the relatively sophisticated arsenal of a country like Iran. Talk about terror.

On Sunday, Hezbollah again struck Haifa -- a city untouched by the militia until a few days ago -- using its biggest and most powerful missile yet. It's one of 800 rockets Hezbollah has launched against Israel in the last five days.

The weapon "hit a busy railway maintenance building, destroying the roof, killing eight, wounding more than 20 and leaving congealing pools of blood on the platform," the Times reports. "Israel said [the missile] was a Syrian-produced model of a Iranian Fajr-3 model, [which Tehran claims can avoid radars and carry multiple warheads -- ed.]. [It] has a range of more than 30 miles and carries a warhead with about 100 pounds of high explosives, which includes antipersonnel shrapnel, a significant change from the smaller Katyushas that Hezbollah has mostly been using."

And there may be worse to come, Ha'Aretz warns.

The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has still not reached its zenith. The Israel Defense Forces' operational plans against the Shi'ite organizations have not yet been carried out. The next two days are the most critical and a lot depends on whether Tehran decides to take a chance and authorize Hezbollah to launch long-range missiles with more powerful warheads. This is a capability Hezbollah still retains, despite the heavy blows it has suffered in the IDF air strikes.

UPDATE 10:44 PM: Kathryn Cramner has worked some of her Google Earth magic, and come up with a fascinating picture of how far Hezbollah can now reach.

Iran Missile Drone Bomb Hits Israelis, U.A.V. Pioneers

UPDATE 07/15/06 11:19 AM: There's an old saw about war: that first reports are always wrong. Looks like that the case about this unmanned plane attack. "A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon," Fox News reports.

The attack on Friday night had raised widespread concern in the Israeli military because initial information indicated that the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.

But the army's investigation into the attack, which left four Israeli sailors missing, showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Another Hezbollah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

UPDATE 07/15/06 12:29 PM: Bill Roggio is now throwing cold water on the missile theory. "The use of a ground based anti-ship missile system in these attacks, while certainly a possibility, is unlikely as the characteristics of this system would certainly have been detected by the Israeli Defense Forces," he writes. "A UAV launched missile system, on the other hand, would be a more stealthy system. The UAVs are difficult to detect as they can fly in below radar, [and] can be flown by remote visual methods."

Stay tuned.

"An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives slammed into an Israeli warship late Friday, causing heavy damage to the vessel," the AP reports. It's the first time the terrorist group -- any terrorist group -- has used a drone in combat, as far as I know.

Hezbollah has flown simple "Misrad-1" unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, twice before, in November 2004 and April 2005. But those were reconnaissance flights, last just a couple of minutes each. And the drones were spotted fairly quickly, both times.

But, as Defense Tech noted in the Spring, the UAV had the potential to be much, much worse -- "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically."

That's what seems to have happened around 8:30pm Friday night to a Saar 5 navy gunship, ten miles off of the Lebanese coast, according to Ynetnews.

It was reported that the stern of an Israeli navy war ship suffered a direct hit in an attack by Hizbullah, which damaged the helicopter landing pad area. The hit caused a conflagration, which was extinguished. No one was hurt in the fire.

Shortly afterwards, crewmembers assessed the damage to the ship and discovered the hit was more severe than originally thought, and had caused damage to the ship’s internal operating systems...

Four crewmembers are reported to be missing.

There's more than bit of irony in Israel being hit with drone attacks. For years, the Israeli military was the world's leader in unmanned aviation. During the first Gulf War, Iraqi troops surrendered to Israel-made, American-run Pioneer UAVs. U.S. Army drone mechanics had to learn Hebrew, to repair their Israeli drones.

But in recent years, the rest of the world has caught up. "Some 32 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250 models" of UAVs, according to the Defense Department.

In response, Pentagon extreme science arm Darpa has launched a $5 million per year effort to build a drone-killing UAV. But the results of that effort are still years away. For now, more conventional methods will have to be used to guard against terrorists' robotic air force.

(Big ups: SMT)

Hezbollah's Deadly Arsenal

For years, the border towns and kibbutzim in the upper Golan section of Israel, near Lebanon and Syria, have been under threat from Katyusha missiles. Cities just a few miles further south -- like Haifa and Tsfat, the crumbling, quiet mountaintop home of Jewish mysticism -- were safe; relying on short-range Katyusha rockets, Lebanese militants had the ability to sew terror only twelve miles into Israel. That changed on Thursday, when Hezbollah launched a new weapon, the Ra'ad rocket, which hit Tsfat and, for the first time, Haifa, 20 miles from the border. 220,000 Israelis stayed in bomb shelters last night to avoid the missiles, Ha'Aretz reports.

The exact make-up and configuration of these weapons is unclear. Some sources call it a modified anti-tank rocket; others a cruise missile. Range estimates vary from 120 to 350 kilometers, or more. One report calls it a 122mm projectile. Hezbollah claims the Iranian-made "rocket is of 333 mm in diameter and has a warhead of 100 kilograms."

Hezbollah's arsenal is likely filled with even deadlier weapons. Israel believes the terrorist group "has missiles that can hit most of Israel, and which could even strike Be'er Sheva [deep in Israel's southern, Negev desert] under optimum conditions," Ha'Aretz notes.

Iran supplied Hezbollah with solid-fuel, Zelzal-2 missiles with a 200-km range, but these are not very accurate, since they do not have a self-guidance system.

The Zelzal-2 missiles, intended to strike broad targets such as communities and cities, are equipped with explosive warheads weighing up to 600 kilograms...

Hezbollah's original Katyusha rockets had a range of 12 kilometers to 22 kilometers. At a later stage, it obtained Iranian Fajar-3 and Fajar-5 rockets, with a range of 45 kilometers and 75 kilometers, respectively. Hezbollah did not use these rockets until the current conflict.

I was supposed to spend my honeymoon next month lounging around Haifa, hiking in the Golan, maybe spending the sabbath in Tsfat. Now, these Hezbollah weapons have introduced a new calculus: how much fear is my wife willing to take?

(Big ups: Roggio, Umansky)