December 15,2008:
For over a decade, Israel has been improving its artillery-spotting radar
to increase the speed with which incoming shells or rockets can be spotted,
identified and tracked back to where they were fired from. This began with
efforts to defend the southern town of Sderot, which has been the target of
Palestinian rockets, from Gaza, for nearly a decade. This effort sought to quickly calculate the trajectory of the
incoming rocket (Palestinian Kassams from Gaza, or Russian and Iranian designs
favored by Hizbollah in Lebanon) and determine if the rocket trajectory indicated
it was going to land in an uninhabited area. If it was determined if the rocket
was headed for an inhabited area, some warning (10-15 seconds), which enabled
people a chance to duck into shelter. Over 90 percent of these rockets landed
in uninhabited areas.
The new
version of this "fast spotter" radar is meant to provide sufficient
time for nearby artillery to get a shell onto the launching area within 30
seconds. The Palestinians are on to this, and often set up the launchers with a
timer, that will fire the rockets after the crew is safely away. In response to
that, Israel has missile armed UAVs circling over potential firing sites,
looking for signs of launch activity. Ideally, these UAVs will fire a missile
at Palestinians setting up rockets. But with the new radar, the UAV operators
will be instantly alerted to a launch, and where it was. The UAV can then hunt
for the fleeing launching crew, and put a missile on them.
The
Palestinians have also tried to put their launchers in residential areas, to
either discourage Israeli counter-fire, or produce dead civilians
("involuntary martyrs" is how the Islamic terrorists describe this)
for propaganda purposes. The civilians know what's up here, and will flee if
they see launchers being set up nearby. But since most of this activity is at
night, many Palestinians simply refuse to live near potential launching sites
in northern Gaza. But the Palestinian terrorists are getting longer range
rockets, that enable them to launch them
from densely populated areas in central Gaza. So while the new radar
helps, it is no panacea. The other side will always react to counter any new
development.