You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Israel fires missiles at Syrian drone
2016-07-18
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Israel on Sunday fired missiles towards an unmanned drone that entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria and it turned back, the military said in a statement.

"Two Patriot air defense missiles were fired towards a drone which infiltrated Israeli airspace in the central Golan Heights. The drone returned to Syria," the Israeli army said.

A military spokeswoman said there were no known casualties.

Israel has often responded to errant mortar fire from the civil war in neighboring Syria on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights with tank and mortar shells and with air strikes, but the use of Patriot anti-aircraft interceptor missiles is unusual.

A Syrian rebel source in the area said the Syrian army had launched a rare air raid on al-Shajara village along the Jordanian border. The village, which is also close to the Israeli frontier, is held by the Shuhada al-Yarmouk group, who are thought to be ISIS affiliates.

Though formally neutral on the civil war, Israel has frequently pledged to prevent shipments of advanced weaponry to Leb’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, whose fighters have been allied with Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
Two months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had launched dozens of strikes in Syria.

The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East, and annexed in a move that has not won international recognition.

Hezbollah says it sent drone to Israel, back safely

[IsraelTimes] Hezbollah-linked Lebanese fighter Anes al-Naqqash says in a tweet the drone shot at by Israel was sent by the Shiite terror group.

Naqqash says the drone had just begun photographing army maneuvers in the Golan when it was shot at and turned back, in a tweet flagged by Yossi Mansharof, an expert from the Ezri Center at the University of Haifa, who tracks Hezbollah movement.

Naqqash says the drone returned safely.
Posted by:Fred

#9  The Debka (yes, salt, lotsa salt added) take was that it was a Russian drone taking a long look at an IDF exercise that started on June 16. Someone decided that the drone had to be dropped so out came the big guns to make a statement.
Posted by: magpie   2016-07-18 20:38  

#8  A pair of belt-fed M-16s mounted in the back of an F-150 and you got yourself a hillbilly ZSU.
Posted by: SteveS   2016-07-18 18:03  

#7  Seems that a .223 AA gun is called for.
Posted by: AlanC   2016-07-18 15:37  

#6  Slow and small evident. Might be the rare target a Sargent York would be good at hitting, but a land based version of the 5"/38 would be used for other things.
Posted by: Shipman   2016-07-18 14:53  

#5  So, RAFAEL get his killer drone contract?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2016-07-18 14:27  

#4  Testing the Patriot to see if it could get the job done?
Posted by: gorb   2016-07-18 10:53  

#3  The unit price includes R&D so it can be very different to the selling price.

Posted by: BernardZ   2016-07-18 07:05  

#2  Unable to engage a slow-moving target?
Posted by: SteveS   2016-07-18 02:28  

#1  ...but the use of Patriot anti-aircraft interceptor missiles is unusual.
Price/Unit Cost: The unit cost of a MIM-104F Patriot PAC-3 missile is $3.43 million (in FY 2012).

WTF? Two missiles and they missed?
Posted by: magpie   2016-07-18 00:47  

00:00