Posted on 02/24/2010 12:37:52 AM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Wow... that makes eminent sense. Thanks for that.
“I hope they have learned something through that experience.”
Yes, they have - the lesson: Isreal is losing the political and popular will to fight a war to win.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
..................
A lot more info and vids here:
http://www.defense-update.com/features/2010/february/eitan_rollout_21022010.html
Its a turbo prop, thats an air intake on top.
Eitan = Ethan.
It’s a name.
Literally means steady or long-lived (like “endurance” or “steadfast”) is the literal translation.
Hard to explain the connotation, think “reliable marathon runner”
Leni
cheers for that. Another poster wrote to me that one of Mossad’s people, who caught Eichmann, was named Eitan too. Makes perfect sense, seeing what he accomplished and in the context of your addition.
“what’s to keep this spruce goose from getting shot down the minute it crosses any border”
I am sure it has some surprising countermeasures, but the biggest countermeasure will be to fly high and away from the actual targets.
SAMs are very expensive. Iran (for example) is a big country.
Lots of Iran is unguarded. Plenty of known holes in radar coverage, too.
The SAMs that can reach out and touch an Etan at 40K feet are generally clustered around the high-value targets.
You just fly around the tagets, but close enough to get pictures. (Basically, edge of horizon from 40K feet.)
A normal country would have plenty of fighters to get these slow beasts, but Iran purged its military of officer ranks, as they were seen as loyalists to the Shah (many of whom trained in Israel and USA, in fact). The Iranian airforce (then, the second best in the Middle East) has never really recovered.
Also, these would be part of a package -— you’d have stand-off cruise missles coming in to hit radar and missle batteries first (possibly from an Etan).
Then you’d come in and start bombing the actual targets, using F-15 and 16, together with medium range ballistic missles.
The sooner the better!
Rafi Eitan was the Mossad honcho in charge of capturing Eichmann.
True, if you mean he was one of the guys who actually grabbed Eichmann off the street and rode off to the safe house in the getaway car holding the monster who had been going by the name “Ricardo Klement.”
The man who planned and staffed the mission, however, was Isser Harel, who was head of Mossad at that time. His account of the capture of Eichmann is entitled, “The House on Garibaldi Street.” (A more recent and more detailed book on the subject came out last year, but I can’t remember the title.)
There was a 1983 report that one of our generals who had been inspecting the Beirut barracks bombing site was asked to visit Israel afterward. They showed him overhead images of himself, walking around the site -- with crosshairs tracking him.
The israelis said, " That is a laser designator. We could have dropped a bomb into your hip pocket at any time during that video. Are you interested in purchasing some of our UAVs?"
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