Israeli robots remake battlefield

Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare.

Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics.

A tiny country is one of the world's leading high-tech hubs.


Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones: Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.




One shudders to think of Hezbollah using drones.


When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it had just a handful of drones. Today, U.S. forces have around 7,000 unmanned vehicles in the air and an additional 12,000 on the ground, used for tasks including reconnaissance, airstrikes and bomb disposal.

7,000 aerial drones produce an overwhelming volume of data.

In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers.


"The Israelis do it differently, not because they're more clever than we are, but because they live in a tough neighborhood and need to respond fast to operational issues," says Thomas Tate, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who now oversees defense cooperation between the U.S. and Israel.

 Their needs are too great to allow them to get bogged down. Every Israeli knows that the nation's security depends on getting things done.

Among the recently deployed technologies that set Israel ahead of the curve is the Guardium unmanned ground vehicle, which now drives itself along the Gaza and Lebanese borders. The Guardium was deployed to patrol for infiltrators in the wake of the abduction of soldiers doing thesame job in 2006. The Guardium, developed by G-nius Ltd., is essentially an armored off-road golf cart with a suite of optical sensors and surveillance gear. It was put into the field for the first time 10 months ago.

A fascinating website of a company with some innovative products. Rafael, too, is a fascinating website.

After bomb-laden fishing boats tried to take out an Israeli Navy frigate off the coast off Gaza in 2002, Rafael designed the Protector SV, an unmanned, heavily armed speedboat that today makes up a growing part of the Israeli naval fleet. The Singapore Navy has also purchased the boat and is using it in patrols in the Persian Gulf.


That is the Protector.


Military analysts say unmanned fighting vehicles could have a far-reaching strategic impact on the sort of asymmetrical conflicts the U.S. is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and that Israel faces against enemies such as Hezbollah and Hamas. In such conflicts, robotic vehicles will allow modern conventional armies to minimize the advantages guerrilla opponents gain by their increased willingness to sacrifice their lives in order to inflict casualties on the enemy.





Suicide bombers could be partially neutralized with such technology.

However, there are also fears that when countries no longer fear losing soldiers' lives in combat thanks to the ability to wage war with unmanned vehicles, they may prove more willing to initiate conflict.


A legitimate concern.


In coming years, engineers say unmanned air, sea and ground vehicles will increasingly work together without any human involvement. Israel and the U.S. have already faced backlash over civilian deaths caused by drone-fired missiles in Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those ethical dilemmas could increase as robots become more independent of their human masters.


Independence?

Israel's last surge before a Gaza cease-fire?

JERUSALEM and Tel Aviv - The Israeli military on Thursday shelled the main United Nations aid compound in Gaza, struck a building that houses foreign news organizations, and caused a fire at a hospital. The attacks sparked global condemnation even as efforts to reach a cease-fire continued. Later in the day, Hamas struck the Israeli city of Beersheba with a salvo of Qassam rockets, injuring five people, two of them seriously. The Israeli strikes on what political officials said were unintended targets in the Gaza campaign underscore what some analysts see as a furious drive by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to achieve as many last-minute blows to Hamas as possible before a cease-fire is reached. And at this stage of the war, fissures are emerging within the Israeli civilian and military leadership.

Over 1,000 Palestinians have died. The pictures are ugly and many details are gruesome. Condemnations have rained from nearly everywhere. But Israel has its objectives.

"It's the final push to make Hamas understand, either they make a decision for a cease-fire, or it will be difficult to survive," says Shmuel Rosner, a leading opinion maker and journalist. "They need to show seriousness so Hamas doesn't interpret Israel's waiting of the last few days as reluctance to continue the operation."

Europeans did nothing to stave off Srebenica, and they have the gall to condemn Israel. Israel knows what it has to do.

While Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, apologized to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon for Israel's strike on their Gaza headquarters, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took a different approach. He said the building had been used by Palestinian militants to strike Israeli forces.

Mr. Olmert, quoting a senior IDF officer, said Israel's troops opened fire on militants inside the compound shot antitank weapons and machine guns. "It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place," he said.

Those two points provide a window into the differences that have developed at the top of the Israel political structure, run by an unlikely troika of Olmert, Mr. Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – none of whom are allied.

Yet Israelis are, of course, not infallible. Nor free of politics.

Ms. Livni, who is running to succeed Olmert, reportedly favors a unilateral pullback even without a cease-fire, according to media reports. A swift pullback would minimize risks to Israeli soldiers as well as the chances of a giving Hamas an opportunity to score any parting blows. A quick withdrawal would also improve Israel's position with its Western allies, which is progressively eroding as damage and death tolls mount.

"She is afraid of a mess up," says Gideon Doron, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University. "The longer you stay there, the higher the likelihood of a soldier getting hurt. That's bad for the ruling party."

Barak, who has got a boost from the polls for leading the war effort, reportedly supports a swift "humanitarian" cease-fire and the Egyptian efforts to reach a truce with Hamas. He would also like to wrap up the fighting and show a willingness to pursue peace to bolster his position among in his pro-peace Labor Party.

Olmert, who reportedly supports continuing the operation, is a lame duck prime minister and is free of his colleagues' political calculations. Mr. Doron says he's concerned about his legacy and would like to be remembered as the leader who squashed Hamas.

Three different outcomes. Three agendas. Three ambitions. One government.

Many observers say that IDF strategists have a short-list of targets they want to strike before a cease-fire. The Israel defense establishment, they say, is loath to slow down and give the impression that it's tired or is lacking in the will to continuing fighting Hamas.

War on Hamas Saps Palestinian Leaders

Walls in Ramallah bear graffiti for Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, but is widely seen as weak and corrupt.

A very troubling situation seems so very difficult to improve. One can only hope that Israel knows what it is doing.

Indeed, Hamas has shown only hostility to anyone perceived as cooperating with Israel. Yuval Diskin, chief of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency, told the cabinet here on Sunday that Hamas had cold-bloodedly killed about 70 Fatah supporters in Gaza under the cover of the war.

That does not seem to be a likely party to compromise.

Hamas Credo Led It to End Cease-Fire

Connected to the post below, Why Israel feels threatened.

On the wall of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem on Monday was a stack of yellow Post-it notes pasted one on top of the next, with the number 10,048 scrawled on the top one. That was the number of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza since 2001.

That is more than 1,400 a year.

For Hamas, the very existence of that number in an Israeli office is an achievement. As plumes of smoke rise from Gaza, it is Hamas that dominates the television news and newspaper headlines.

Hamas gains status and publicity as the resistance movement to Israel. Cynical, but effective.

Even knowing that retaliation was certain, Hamas seemed to end the cease-fire in part because of its longstanding discipline and consistency. For years it has preached to Palestinians the rejectionist credo that Fatah negotiated with Israel and got nowhere; Hamas’s way of armed force, it argued year in and year out, was the only way.

True. Negotiations got next to nothing accomplished. Resistance, such as it is, confers some dignity where there is little else.

Some in Gaza believe Hamas wants Israeli soldiers to enter the Gaza Strip, because it has had 18 months to smuggle weapons in through tunnels from the Sinai since it seized control of the territory from Fatah. For the last several years, after Israel’s pullout from Gaza in 2005 and its erection of a barrier around the West Bank, it has been harder to strike at Israelis.

Israel, though, is aware of the risks and will not reflexively mount a large-scale military return to Gaza.

Israel fears Hamas might blow up Rafah

Speak of intractable problems: Israel has been fighting all of its 60 years to survive as a nation. Still groups such as Hamas vow its destruction. Even with its sometime heavy hand, Israel must defend itself.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry warned that any move to do so [breach the border] would hurt the Palestinian cause and undermine efforts to end the Israeli embargo on Gaza. The ministry statement criticized the timing of the Hamas threats, saying they coincided with "the concocted problems inside Egypt," an apparent reference to this week's deadly riots over rising food prices.

Fatah and Hamas sign deal

A reconciliation of the two Palestinian sides, sponsored by Yemen. Of course, what is on the surface is not the substance of politics. Reading further, what the pact actually is becomes clearer.

Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas signed a Yemeni-sponsored deal on Sunday promising to revive direct talks after months of hostilities, but differences remained over the future of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

So it is an agreement to negotiate, and not to reconcile.