Posted on 04/30/2024 4:02:07 PM PDT by hardspunned
The Israeli Air Force is set to bid farewell to its aging Patriot missile defense systems in the coming months, replacing the batteries with more advanced air defenses, the military said Tuesday.
In February, the IAF said it was in the process of closing several Patriot batteries, and its staff would be trained to operate the Iron Dome instead.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
They have other systems, Iron Dome is for short range rockets; David’s Sling is a missile and drone interceptor but I am not sure if it’s been deployed.
I am a big fan of these defensive systems. They save lives on all sides. If you can knock rockets and missiles and drones out of the sky, you save your civilian and military infrastructure and don’t have to launch a massive counter-strike.
It worked against Gaza for the last 15 years. The strategic error was not expecting a massive bum-rush across the border by a hoard of bloodthirsty terrorists. They got too complacent being able to knock Gaza rockets out of the sky and ignored that ground offensive threat.
Contractor corruption (promises of almost no-show jobs for govvies after retirement) and incompetent or corrupt government oversight will cause this country to lose the next big one.
Oceans are also a way of projecting power.
See Mahan, “The Influence of Sea Power upon History”
If the US can only deal with unfriendly ports on the other side of the oceans, it is isolated and economically crippled. At the same time its competitors will own the Earths economy and its resources, and become vastly more powerful.
Other countries have low-altitude missiles that are supersonic. Russia shot a few into Ukraine. Low and fast. Hard to defeat at the moment but hopefully technology will improve. And hopefully they don’t have too many of them and haven’t sold the tech to Iran or China.
QUESTION: Why would Israel ‘retire’ the Patriots in the middle of a HOT WAR, possibly spreading to Iran?
ANSWER: They didn’t. They were ORDERED to send the Patriots to Ukraine by every Zeeper’s favorite president.
Nothing else makes sense, at least to me.
“production ramping up?”
Not happening, at least in any significant quantity - too reliant on Chinese piece-parts and China isn’t in much mood to help us ramp up our military.
Probably should have thought about that before starting wars around the world...
As usual, you thought wrong. These are PAC-2 batteries Israel purchased in 1991. They are effective against aircraft and cruise missiles, and very limited capability against short range (tactical) ballistic missiles, none of which reached Israeli airspace. Almost all of the drones and cruise missiles Iran fired were shot down by fighter jets, far from Israel.
Rather than upgrade to PAC-3, Israel (along with the USA) developed several other missiles to deal with ballistic missiles.
Why doesn’t the U.S. take them back or buy them back with some of the $26Billion we are giving to Israel and supply them to Ukraine?
I doubt anyone, even you, would be surprised if that eventually happens. But there will be some "political distance" between the transactions, and possibly an intermediary other than the USA.
We have incredible resources here at home. It’s just that we have a government hell bent on keeping them from being exploited. We can feed ourselves and fuel ourselves if we wanted to.
I don’t know the future of naval warfare in the age of drones. The Houthis have taken out some of our air drones, and have tried to swarm our ships with naval drones.
If we put in the effort we can certainly protect the homeland but the days of projecting power across the world’s oceans may be in its last decade. We’ll need land and shoreline bases from which to house our aircraft, air drones and sea drones.
Iron Dome doesnt do ballistic missiles. It was intended for short range Katyusha or Grad type rockets.
ABM work is for Arrow and Davids Sling, also Israeli systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(missile_family)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling
well Israel, apparently, was able to strike the radar dish of Iran’s missile defense. I think it was a stealth missile probably a small one.
Well after Israel did what they did it got me thinking..if here are stealth planes there is likely stealth ICBMs
You could be right. I haven’t heard of them, but that would be the point. It is also possible Iran doesn’t have any decent air defenses. They had Russian S-300s which are useless. Russia put them in Syria but didn’t even turn them on - my guess is for fear of embarrassment at how bad they are. The S-400 is also 30 years old and the S-500 is brand new and I don’t think has been deployed anywhere.
Fuel yes. Feed, yes. Basic Industry, yes. But when you get to electronics and specialized metals, no.
And then there is labor.
And that is where it matters in military competition. R&D competition alone will overwhelm an isolated US.
Yeah, or a stealth plane can just drop a regular missile or guided bomb at close range where it is too late for defenses to react.
Stealth cruise missiles, yes. Ukraine has been using British-French Storm Shadow for quite a while now.
That vehicle dates from the Reagan administration (1982). Or the development process to the Carter administration at least, if not earlier.
The EPA spec is, you will note, from the Bush admin. But that is not the vehicle spec, which is much older.
The current idea is for F35’s to drop SDB’s or similar from 30-60km or so, too far to be detected, or at least locked-on.
SDB fits in the F35 internal bay.
Yeah if have them, (Russia, China, and possibly Iran, who I’m pretty sure Iran already has nukes) then warning systems and the radars that the missile defense depends on, would be useless.
Well I’m thinking stealth ICBMs, which can carry the big nukes. Russia has one that split into 10 nukes.
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