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Posted on 03/31/2005 5:20:31 AM PST by IAF ThunderPilot
Israeli-developed armor that has been installed on American armored personnel carriers (APCs) in Iraq has saved "many lives", according to a letter of recognition the US Army has sent to Rafael, the Israel Armament Development Authority.
The Bradley and 7AV APCs in the service of the US Army and the Marines, which play a central role in the armed operations in Iraq, have been fitted over the last year with armor by Rafael in partial cooperation with the American General Dynamics company, based in Burlington, Vermont.
A source in the company told ISRAEL21c that the letter stated, "When the fighting in Iraq was tough, and your product was urgently needed, you did everything you could to expedite production and delivery."
The rush deliveries were part of the US military's effort to slow the damage done by roadside mines, explosive charges and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), which have killed more than 150 U.S. troops in Iraq.
According to the Israeli paper Ma'ariv, one of the senior officials in the American defense establishment said explicitly: the Bradely is the best protected vehicle in Iraq.
Rafael received the $19.4 million order from the U.S. Army's TACOM / ARDEC Picatinny Arsenal last year, covering procurement of 56 reactive armor vehicle sets and 170 partial sets for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The contract also included funding for the qualification and first-article testing of a product upgrade to further improve crew and vehicle survivability over the current design.
"They were trying to find American-made armor not something that comes from abroad," said the Rafael source, but after much research found that Rafael's was the most reliable.
According to Rafael's web site, with the new reactive armor, the Bradley is better able to withstand a direct hit from a variety of anti-armor munitions, including shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades, which are in abundant supply in many of today's regional conflicts.
The armor is of the most advanced in the world: it is made up of passive protection, which is constructed of strong material that diverts the rocket, and of reactive protection, which is comprised of plates that contain explosives. The minute the rocket jet stream hits one of those plates the explosives go off, preventing the rocket from penetrating the APC.
The add-on armor consists of 105 tiles that attach to the sides, the turret and the front of each Bradley. The tiles, which look like small boxes, contain a special explosive charge that detonates when hit by a missile or rocket with a shaped-charge warhead. The resulting explosion disrupts the incoming, armor-penetrating gas jet produced by a RPG, for example, so the Bradley remains unharmed.
"The armor has minimal effect on the vehicle, it's lightweight and easy to enter. Crews in the field can handle it easily," the Rafael source told ISRAEL21c. "The active armor is also easy to handle - it can operate in extreme conditions and temperatures."
"The idea is to apply chemical energy against chemical energy," an official within Rafael told Defense News.. "These tiles contain a very special, insensitive explosive that is detonated only when hit by a missile or a rocket. For safety reasons, our armor does not react to other heat sources such as small arms or other fragments. When it detonates, the action of the elements inside the tiles interact with the incoming jet of the warhead, and defeats it."
The US Army is thrilled with the results, according a release from the US Program Executive Office Ground Combat Systems (PEO-GCS).
"Reactive armor has functioned very well. The soldiers in these (Bradley) units are excited about the product because it is providing a level of survivability that they previously didn't have," said Maj. John Conway, assistant product manager of Bradley systems for the PEO-GCS.
"All you have to do is read the news about the kinds of threats our soldiers are encountering and you immediately realize that these tiles are saving lives because they are defeating the threats they were designed to defeat," Conway said, adding "for the foreseeable future, reactive armor is one of the best ways to defeat these kinds of threats."
"The Bradley program manager told us he had no doubt that the Rafael reactive armor was saving lives in Iraq," Rafael Chairman Jacob Toren told Defense News. "This is a proven capability; it's not theoretical. It's in full production at GDATP and here at Rafael."
Rafael first began applying reactive armor technology immediately after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Israeli military realized its older-model tanks were vulnerable to missiles and rockets. Israel became the world's first army to use reactive armor, but kept it secret until Syrian forces captured an Israeli tank in Lebanon.
Since then, Rafael has continuously improved its technology and applied it to numerous programs in Israel and abroad. The armored systems directorate official noted that Rafael provided add-on armor for the U.S. Marine Corps' AAV7 amphibious assault vehicles used during major combat operations in Iraq earlier last year.
Rafael has been working with GDATP since 1994 to provide reactive armor sets for the U.S. Army Bradleys. The latest contracts for the improved sets bring total production orders to 605.
Rafael's representative told ISRAEL21c "The result is a quality-proven product which has saved the lives of many Marines."
After all, if we can't use Jewish made ammunition to shoot the Muslim terrorists, we surely can't use Jewish made armor for protection.
So a few GI's and Marines die, big deal - at least we won't offend any Muslims in the process.
~~~extreme sarcasm off~~~
This technology was around a LONG LONG time before we got involved in the Mideast. Sad that the Army is only now getting "thrilled with the results."
G-d bless Israel and her people.
Reactive armour. What will they think of next?
Kudos to Israel though, this stuff is obviously light for what it is.
Essentially all anti-tank munitions work by piercing the armor and killing the crew inside. Reactive armor's protective mechanism involves producing an explosion or other such reaction when it is impacted by a weapon, actively "pushing back" against it. This is particularly effective against shaped charge warheads, in which the warhead directs a focused jet of molten metal against the armor; reactive armor's reaction disrupts the jet before it reaches the armor's surface.
The effect was discovered in 1967–68 by a German researcher, Manfred Held, working in Israel. He and his team were using the large quantities of wrecked tanks from the Six Day War to test shells. They accidentally discovered that tanks that still contained live ordinance could disrupt a shaped charge by the explosion of the shells, the basis of ERA. The concept was patented in 1970."
I am grateful to Israel for their help on behalf of United States soldies. It just appears that the Army was a little slow on the uptake in getting this type of technology in place. There may be any number of explanations of course, budget cuts, cold war drawdown, but still, I wonder.
The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a grievous error, largely attributable to the fact that it occurred in the midst of the confusion of a full-scale war in 1967. Ten official United States investigations and three official Israeli inquiries have all conclusively established the attack was a tragic mistake.
On June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli high command received reports that Israeli troops in El Arish were being fired upon from the sea, presumably by an Egyptian vessel, as they had a day before. The United States had announced that it had no naval forces within hundreds of miles of the battle front on the floor of the United Nations a few days earlier; however, the USS Liberty, an American intelligence ship assigned to monitor the fighting, arrived in the area, 14 miles off the Sinai coast, as a result of a series of United States communication failures, whereby messages directing the ship not to approach within 100 miles were not received by the Liberty. The Israelis mistakenly thought this was the ship doing the shelling and war planes and torpedo boats attacked, killing 34 members of the Liberty's crew and wounding 171.
Numerous mistakes were made by both the United States and Israel. For example, the Liberty was first reported — incorrectly, as it turned out — to be cruising at 30 knots (it was later recalculated to be 28 knots). Under Israeli (and U.S.) naval doctrine at the time, a ship proceeding at that speed was presumed to be a warship. The sea was calm and the U.S. Navy Court of Inquiry found that the Liberty's flag was very likely drooped and not discernible; moreover, members of the crew, including the Captain, Commander William McGonagle, testified that the flag was knocked down after the first or second assault.
According to Israeli Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs, there were standing orders to attack any unidentified vessel near the shore. The day fighting began, Israel had asked that American ships be removed from its coast or that it be notified of the precise location of U.S. vessels. The Sixth Fleet was moved because President Johnson feared being drawn into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. He also ordered that no aircraft be sent near Sinai.
A CIA report on the incident issued June 13, 1967, also found that an overzealous pilot could mistake the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, the El Quseir. After the air raid, Israeli torpedo boats identified the Liberty as an Egyptian naval vessel. When the Liberty began shooting at the Israelis, they responded with the torpedo attack, which killed 28 of the sailors.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff investigated the communications failure and noted that the Chief of Naval Operations expressed concern about the prudence of sending the Liberty so close to the area of hostilities and four messages were subsequently sent instructing the ship to move farther away from the area of hostilities. The JCS report said the messages were never received because of “a combination of (1) human error, (2) high volume of communications traffic, and (3) lack of appreciation of sense of urgency regarding the movement of the Liberty.” The report also included a copy of a flash cable sent immediately after the attack, which reported that Israel had “erroneously” attacked the Liberty, that IDF helicopters were in rescue operations, and that Israel had sent “abject apologies” and requested information on any other U.S. ships near the war zone.
Initially, the Israelis were terrified that they had attacked a Soviet ship and might have provoked the Soviets to join the fighting. Once the Israelis were sure what had happened, they reported the incident to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and offered to provide a helicopter for the Americans to fly out to the ship and any help they required to evacuate the injured and salvage the ship. The offer was accepted and a U.S. naval attaché was flown to the Liberty.
The Israelis were “obviously shocked” by the error they made in attacking the ship, according to the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In fact, according to a secret report on the 1967 war, the immediate concern was that the Arabs might see the proximity of the Liberty to the conflict as evidence of U.S.-Israel collusion.
Many of the survivors of the Liberty remain bitter, and are convinced the attack was deliberate as they make clear on their web site. In 1991, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak trumpeted their discovery of an American who said he had been in the Israeli war room when the decision was made to knowingly attack the American ship. In fact, that individual, Seth Mintz, wrote a letter to the Washington Post on November 9, 1991, in which he said he was misquoted by Evans and Novak and that the attack, was, in fact, a "case of mistaken identity." Moreover, the man who Mintz originally said had been with him, a Gen. Benni Matti, does not exist.
Also, contrary to claims that an Israeli pilot identified the ship as American on a radio tape, no one has ever produced this tape. In fact, the official Israeli Air Force tape clearly established that no such identification of the ship was made by the Israeli pilots prior to the attack. Tapes of the radio transmissions made prior, during and after the attack do not contain any statement suggesting the pilots saw a U.S. flag before the attack. During the attack, a pilot specifically says, “there is no flag on her!” The recordings also indicate that once the pilots became concerned about the identity of the ship, by virtue of reading its hull number, they terminated the attack and they were given an order to leave the area. A transcript of the radio transmissions indicates the entire incident, beginning with the spotting of a mysterious vessel off El Arish and ending with the chief air controller at general headquarters in Tel Aviv telling another controller the ship was “apparently American” took 24 minutes. Critics claimed the Israeli tape was doctored, but the National Security Agency of the United States released formerly top secret transcripts in July 2003 that confirmed the Israeli version.
A U.S. spy plane was sent to the area as soon as the NSA learned of the attack on the Liberty and recorded the conversations of two Israeli Air Force helicopter pilots, which took place between 2:30 and 3:37 p.m. on June 8. The orders radioed to the pilots by their supervisor at the Hatzor base instructing them to search for Egyptian survivors from the "Egyptian warship" that had just been bombed were also recorded by the NSA. "Pay attention. The ship is now identified as Egyptian," the pilots were informed. Nine minutes later, Hatzor told the pilots the ship was believed to be an Egyptian cargo ship. At 3:07, the pilots were first told the ship might not be Egyptian and were instructed to search for survivors and inform the base immediately the nationality of the first person they rescued. It was not until 3:12 that one of the pilots reported that he saw an American flag flying over the ship at which point he was instructed to verify if it was indeed a U.S. vessel.
In October 2003, the first Israeli pilot to reach the ship broke his 36-year silence on the attack. Brig.-Gen. Yiftah Spector, a triple ace, who shot down 15 enemy aircraft and took part in the 1981 raid on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, said he had been told an Egyptian ship was off the Gaza coast. "This ship positively did not have any symbol or flag that I could see. What I was concerned with was that it was not one of ours. I looked for the symbol of our navy, which was a large white cross on its deck. This was not there, so it wasn't one of ours." The Jerusalem Post obtained a recording of Spector's radio transmission in which he said, "I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship."
None of Israel's accusers can explain why Israel would deliberately attack an American ship at a time when the United States was Israel's only friend and supporter in the world. Confusion in a long line of communications, which occurred in a tense atmosphere on both the American and Israeli sides (five messages from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the ship to remain at least 25 miles — the last four said 100 miles — off the Egyptian coast arrived after the attack was over) is a more probable explanation.
Accidents caused by “friendly fire” are common in wartime. In 1988, the U.S. Navy mistakenly downed an Iranian passenger plane, killing 290 civilians. During the Gulf War, 35 of the 148 Americans who died in battle were killed by “friendly fire.” In April 1994, two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters with large U.S. flags painted on each side were shot down by U.S. Air Force F-15s on a clear day in the “no fly” zone of Iraq, killing 26 people. In April 2002, an American F-16 dropped a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, the day before the Liberty was attacked, Israeli pilots accidentally bombed one of their own armored columns.
Retired Admiral, Shlomo Erell, who was Chief of the Navy in Israel in June 1967, told the Associated Press (June 5, 1977): “No one would ever have dreamt that an American ship would be there. Even the United States didn't know where its ship was. We were advised by the proper authorities that there was no American ship within 100 miles.”
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress on July 26, 1967: “It was the conclusion of the investigatory body, headed by an admiral of the Navy in whom we have great confidence, that the attack was not intentional.”
In 1987, McNamara repeated his belief that the attack was a mistake, telling a caller on the “Larry King Show” that he had seen nothing in the 20 years since to change his mind that there had been no “coverup.”
In January 2004, the State Department held a conference on the Liberty incident and also released new documents, including CIA memos dated June 13 and June 21, 1967, that say that Israel did not know it was striking an American vessel. The historian for the National Security Agency, David Hatch, said the available evidence "strongly suggested" Israel did not know it was attacking a U.S. ship. Two former U.S. officials, Ernest Castle, the United States Naval Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in June 1967, who received the first report of the attack from Israel, and John Hadden, then CIA Chief of Station in Tel Aviv, also agreed with the assessment that the attack on the Liberty was a mistake.
The new documents do not shed any light on the mystery of what the ship was doing in the area or why Israel was not informed about its presence. The evidence suggests the ship was not spying on Israel.
Israel apologized for the tragedy and paid nearly $13 million in humanitarian reparations to the United States and to the families of the victims in amounts established by the U.S. State Department. The matter was officially closed between the two governments by an exchange of diplomatic notes on December 17, 1987.
Regarding Jonathan Pollard:
In November 1985, the FBI arrested Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, on charges of selling classified material to Israel. Pollard was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. His wife, Anne, got five years in jail for assisting her husband.
Immediately upon Pollard's arrest, Israel apologized and explained that the operation was unauthorized. "It is Israel's policy to refrain from any intelligence activity related to the United States," an official government statement declared, "in view of the close and special relationship of friendship" between the two countries. Prime Minister Shimon Peres stated: "Spying on the United States stands in total contradiction to our policy."
The United States and Israel worked together to investigate the Pollard affair. The Israeli inquiry revealed that Pollard was not working for Israeli military intelligence or the Mossad. He was directed by a small, independent scientific intelligence unit. Pollard initiated the contact with the Israelis.
A subcommittee of the Knesset's Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee on Intelligence and Security Services concluded: "Beyond all doubt...the operational echelons (namely: the Scientific Liaison Unit headed by Rafael Eitan) decided to recruit and handle Pollard without any check or consultation with the political echelon or receiving its direct or indirect approval." The Knesset committee took the government to task for not properly supervising the scientific unit.
As promised to the U.S. government, the spy unit that directed Pollard was disbanded, his handlers punished and the stolen documents returned. The last point was crucial to the U.S. Department of Justice's case against Pollard.
Pollard denied spying "against" the United States. He said he provided only information he believed was vital to Israeli security and was being withheld by the Pentagon. This included data on Soviet arms shipments to Syria, Iraqi and Syrian chemical weapons, the Pakistani atomic bomb project and Libyan air defense systems.
Pollard was convicted of espionage. His life sentence was the most severe prison term ever given for spying for an ally. It also was far greater than the average term imposed for spying for the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States.
Though initially shunned by Israel, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Pollard had worked for Israeli intelligence and granted him citizenship. Netanyahu requested clemency for Pollard during Middle East peace talks at the Wye Plantation in Maryland in 1998. Since then, Israeli officials have made additional entreaties on Pollard's behalf.
Pollard's supporters in the United States also routinely request that he be pardoned. President Clinton reportedly considered a pardon, but defense and intelligence agency officials vigorously opposed the idea. At the end of Clinton's term, the issue was again raised and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, along with a majority of senators argued against a pardon. "Mr. Pollard is a convicted spy who put our national security at risk and endangered the lives of our intelligence officers," Shelby said. "There not terms strong enough to express my belief that Mr. Pollard should serve every minute of his sentence...."
In November 2003, a federal judge rejected requests by Pollard to appeal his life sentence and review classified government documents that Pollard said would prove his spying was not as damaging or as extensive as prosecutors had charged. The judge said that Pollard had waited too long — more than a decade after it was imposed — to object to his sentence and ruled that Pollard's attorneys offered no compelling justification for seeing the sealed intelligence documents.
Copyright American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Reprinted with permission.
There have been over a dozen investigations of the Liberty event and Pollard is in jail. What's your point, and why are trying to make it on a thread about American lives being saved??
Don't bother. You can't reason with these types.
Anti-Semites use the USS Liberty incident as an excuse to drive a wedge between America and Israel. They're certifiable fools.
Regards, Ivan
Send Donald Rumsfeld an EMail. Tell him to return the armor ASAP. I'm sure he'll listen
Gee, now accusations of disloyalty. Can't you characters come up with anything original?
Rubbish. Why is it you anti-Semites all sing from the same hymnsheet, do you really think we're such fools as to not know that you've all succumbed to the same idiotic propaganda?
Israel is the shining beacon of civilisation in an otherwise largely barbaric region. It deserves the support of its brother states in the West. There are obviously going to be tensions, disagreements and accidents in the lives of two nations relations with each other - I could bring up how many friendly fire accidents have occured in which Americans killed British troops, yet we're still allies, because our shared values and the overall value of the alliance is more important.
To conclude, take your anti-Semitic rubbish and shove it up your anal orifice.
Ivan
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