What’s in a drone? In the case of the unmanned aircraft that Hizballah sent over Israel earlier this month, the answer is: Pretty much just the headlines. The aircraft produced a great many photographs, but they were all of its own wreckage, scattered across the wastes of the Negev Desert after an Israeli fighter sent a missile into its fuselage. The camera on board the drone went down with it the morning of Oct. 6, along with any images taken during its brief foray over Israeli territory, according to Asaf Agmon, head of Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, an Israeli think tank. Despite the bold posturing of Hizballah, which sent the drone, and Iran, which manufactured it, the aircraft had no ability to transmit images back to its base. It was, in effect, a passenger pigeon, slow, vulnerable and with a net military effect of almost nil.

“This is the technology of the late ‘80s,” Agmon, a retired brigadier general in the Israeli air force, tells TIME. “It’s a nuisance, but it forces us to deal with it.”

In the publicity realm, however, the aircraft caused a sensation. Launched from Lebanon, it cruised across the southeast corner of the Mediterranean and entered Israeli air space between the coastal cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon – not by way of the Gaza Strip, as originally reported, an Israeli security source tells TIME. Israeli radar – which reaches as far as 300 miles – tracked it electronically, and pilots in scrambled fighters followed it visually.

It was not moving fast. Driven by a propeller, the drone’s top speed was that of a small car, perhaps 100 mph. It could climb no higher than 10,000 feet. When it passed beyond populated areas, and there was no risk of damage from falling debris, the order was given to shoot it down. The first missile missed. The explosion of the second, released as a gunsight video, blew it into so many pieces that Bedouin shepherds stumbled across some of them even after Israeli soldiers had supposedly swept the area clean. What they had found was less than alarming. The vehicle had been guided by GPS, programmed at its base to follow coordinates downloaded from a satellites, like a cell phone. It had no capacity to show its commanders what it was seeing under it, because it lacked the ability to upload to a satellite transponder; nor could it change its course once under way. The resolution of the camera it carried may have been scarcely better than Google Earth, says Agmon, the retired brigadier.

“The technology they’re using is something like 20-years-plus behind the state of Israel,” Agmon says. “It’s going to take [Iran] a lot of time to reach the level of the West. Although we must not forget they were the ninth country to send a satellite into space. It was primitive, but still….”

But still, this is a realm where Israel should be happy to engage an enemy, drones being something of the country’s specialty. The Jewish state produced the first military unmanned craft during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, using them not as surveillance or missile platforms but as decoys for Syrian anti-aircraft guns that had been punishing Israeli pilots. In the years that followed, Israel Aerospace Industries showed the Pentagon the way into a new dimension of military aviation – playing big brother to the superpower that, as a matter of legislation and executive policy, is committed to assure Israel a “qualitative military edge” over its neighbors. As of 2010, the Israel Defense Forces order of battle lists a baker’s dozen of unmanned aerial vehicles, ranging from the massive Heron – which with the wingspan of a 737 and the carrying capacity to remain aloft for a day at a time, jamming computers on the ground, would play an important role in any attack on Iran’s nuclear sites – to battlefield drones small enough to fit in a soldier’s backpack. Engineers are testing new models so tiny they can pass for insects, including a butterfly drone meant to operate inside buildings. Never mind the mosquitos.

There’s a rich and amusing history of paranoid foreign states declaring they have detected evidence of Israel’s technological prowess in the animal kingdom: Saudi Arabia saw a banded Griffon vulture as a spy, Turkey a European bee-eater. When a shark attacked a tourist in the Red Sea, Egyptians blamed Mossad. And Iran five years ago reported that 14 squirrels had been detained near its border on suspicion of espionage. Yet Hizballah was justified in impounding rocks – fake ones, outfitted with cameras and tucked amid the rubble of a hillside north of the Blue Line.

But Israel’s mythic reputation for innovation and astonishing reach cuts both ways. So formidable is the image of Fortress Israel that that the slightest breach can be made out as a triumph – and, for Hizballah, a way of changing the subject from the group’s unflagging support for a Syrian government slaughtering its own people. The PR success managed to overshadow the military price of the same episode. By sending the drone up as a diversion, Hizballah revealed a heretofore hidden capacity to the Israelis, sacrificing the element of surprise that would have mattered more in the controlled chaos of a shooting war. “With every new encounter, we see a new advance on their side,” Agmon notes. “Revealing it was a weak move.”

The Shi’ite militia, created by and armed by Iran, represents a genuine ongoing threat to Israel. Its 40,000 missiles are no nuisance; the arsenal would overwhelm Israel’s anti-missile systems, and likely produce casualties in the thousands. But the question of air superiority was decided decades ago. The day after the drone was shot down, Israeli pilots roared through Lebanese skies for an hour. The Beirut government asked the United Nations to take note of the violation of its air space, Lebanon’s foreign minister complaining that the Israelis have done it “tens of thousands of times.” Exactly: And so the news remained the drone. “Great job by Hizballah,” chirped Iran’s defense minister. “We can reach any place we want,” crowed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah’s leader, speaking from an undisclosed location. He lives mostly underground, for fear of an Israeli air strike.

TIME



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Meskipun Hizbullah yang mengirimkan drone dan Iran yang memproduksinya menunjukkan sikap yang kelewat PD, usut punya usut ternyata pesawat tersebut gak punya kemampuan untuk mengirim hasil jepretan kamera kembali ke markas. Pesawat tanpa awak itu laksana merpati yang lemot, rentan diserang, dan kontribusi militer yang hampir nihil.

"Teknologinya itu teknologi era akhir 80-an," kata Agmon, purnawirawan brigjen angkatan udara Israel.

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Radar Israel - yang menjangkau sekitar 300 mil - melacaknya dan kemudian pilot pesawat tempur mengikutinya.

Drone tersebut tidak bergerak cepat. Digerakan oleh baling-baling, top speed drone kira-kira secapat mobil kecil, mungkin 100 mil per jam. Selain itu juga gak bisa terbang lebih tinggi dari 10 ribu kaki. Ketika drone di luar daerah berpenduduk dan gak ada risiko kerusakan akibat puing-puing yang jatuh, perintah diberikan untuk menembaknya.

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Drone tersebut gak bisa memberikan jepretan visual kepada yang empunya karena gak punya kemampuan untuk mengirim data ke transponder satelit dan juga gak bisa mengubah arah setelah diterbangkan.

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"Teknologi yang mereka pergunakan itu ketinggalan 20 tahun lebih dari Israel," kata Agmon...

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Ada cerita-cerita kocak mengenai negara-negara paranoid yang menyebutkan bahwa mereka menemukan bukti kecanggihan teknologi Isreal di dunia binatang. Arab Saudi mengira seekor burung pemakan bangkai bercincin sebagai mata-mata. Sementara Turki mengira burung pemakan lebah sebagai mata-mata. Ketika ada serangan hiu di Laut Merah, orang Mesir menyalahkan Mossad. Dan Iran, 5 tahun lalu, melaporkan 14 tupai telah ditangkap dekat perbatasan karena dicurigai merupakan mata-mata.

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Sangatlah hebat citra pertahanan Israel sampai-sampai penyusupan sekecil-kecilnya dapat dianggap sebagai kemenangan.

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Hassan Nasrallah, pimpinan Hizbullah, berbicara dari tempat yang dirahasiakan. Dia kebanyakan bersembunyi di bawah tanah takut akan serangan udara Israel.


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Jadi yang strong yang mana sih? :

Kalau dipikir2, kalo cuman drone bisa masuk doang sudah digembork2an dengan begitu semangatnya berarti mengakui kalo Israel memang strong. Sehingga capaian sekecil apa pun sudah dianggap kemenangan mutlak.

Btw kok teknologinya ketinggalan: confused:
Apa Iran pelit ngasihnya barang bekas? :


Kalo tret begini bakalan rame enggak yak :