April 2011 Archives

Most of the bombs carried by Israeli airforce (IAF) fighters are getting either bigger or smaller. This trend is a result of the variety of missions the IAF is called to perform.

After equipping its F-15Is with small diameter bombs (SDB) the IAF is considering their use also on its F-16s.

The IAF's F-15Is that were already equipped with the SDBs will achieve initial operational capability very soon.

The SDB has two variants. The GBU-39 250-pound bomb is equipped with an INS/GPS guidance system suitable for fixed and stationary targets. The second version, the GBU-40, is equipped with a terminal seeker with automatic target recognition capabilities and intended for use against moving targets.

The SDB dimensions increases the number of bombs a fighter aircraft carries, therefore raising the amount of targets it can kill in one sortie.

Lessons from the war in Lebanon and fighting in the Gaza Strip brought the IAF to prefer smaller bombs with limited collateral damage.

So while most of the big bombs are kept for "real " wars, the smaller ones are being used more frequently in the ongoing low intensity conflicts that never end in the region.

When the F-35s eventually arrive in Israel, they also will be equipped with some new versions of SDBs that will fit the unique configuration of the stealth fighter.

The crowded Israeli skies seem to lure more and more businessmen that think they have the formula to make money by offering "the right thing" to passengers.

A group of Israeli aviation entrepreneurs are getting ready to join the already very competitive market. They are negotiating the purchase of two Boeing 737-300s and have applied for the needed approvals from the Israel civil aviation authority (CAA).

Market sources say that the new initiative (currently under the name Leadair) is aimed at offering cheap charter flights to Mediterranean and European destinations.

The boiling Israeli aviation market is going to get a temperature boost soon. It will be very interesting to see what is the new approach, that will allow the new business to function with profits.

The Israeli market is currently served by three Israeli airlines and by around 110 foreign scheduled and charter airlines that operate in Ben-Gurion international airport, according to the season.

Firefighting aircraft will be more capable of performing accurate "water bombing" with the help of very advanced Israeli developed electro optical payloads.

It's nice to know that this advanced and ripe technology can be used for such a purpose in addition to its other uses, mainly as a locator of targets for sophisticated weapon systems.

The importance of dropping the water or fire retardants on the exact point in the burning area to achieve the best results spurred the adaptation of the payloads to their new mission.

The Tamam division of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), has sold an adapted version of one of its best selling payloads for the new mission.

According to Shaul Shahar, general manger of Tamam, the accurate drop of water or fire retardants is essential when large fires are fought from the air. "This is especially important when the fire tanker has scooping capabilities like the CL-415 or the Beriev -200," says Shahar.

The Multi-purpose Optical Stabilized Payload (MOSP) is equipped with a choice of sensors, including second or third generation FLIR, colour CCD with high power telephoto zoom lens and a laser rangefinder/designator.

The MOSP can be equipped with a dual-channel video link that enables simultaneous transmission of both FLIR and CCD images via data link.

According to Shahar, the MOSP supplies the pilots with the exact location of the fire even in difficult conditions.

 This is evolution at its best. Human interface engineers are working hard these days to better integrate the variety of unmanned air systems into the arsenal of the Israeli air force (IAF).

For many years they have been busy making the work of pilots more comfortable. But this has been changing . The working conditions of a UAS payload operator sitting in a crowded ground control station are no less important.

The results of outstanding technology, the best human interface engineers, some psychology and a lot of experience, mixed in with some urgent operations requirements, is what you see when you visit the IAF's centre for operational research.

The centre cooperates with all key industries in Israel that are developing systems for combat fighters and UAS.

Combat pilots and UAS operators are frequent visitors in the centre's facilities and they are requested to operate the systems under the supervision of its experts in an effort to detect the potential problems.

It is true that most of the IAF's UAS take off , fly and land autonomously, but from the ground station someone is in control of the payloads they carry and these become more sophisticated.

The secret is how to best to produce a complete picture of the battlefield from a number of UAVs flying over it, in other words how to assure that the different UAS see the same target in spite of watching it from different altitudes and angles.

The growing automation of the IAF's unmanned systems of all kinds poses some new challenges. One of the most complicated is the "grey area" between the automated platform and the human behind it . How, for example, this human will go into action in case of a major breakdown of the UAS.

The fact that the IAF is performing combat missions almost on a daily basis puts a heavy burden on the centre's staff. 

As the Israeli military sees it, many missions in the very near future will be performed by joint forces of "robots" in the air, on the ground and at sea.

Following the development trends of the Israeli unmanned combat systems leaves no doubt. The battlefield, and before that routine security operations, will be put in the "hands" of those sophisticated machines, some with artificial intelligence as a built in feature.

To allow that vision of "robots" working together to come true, the future Israeli developed unmanned air systems (UAS) are designed with a capability to operate in conjunction with fully autonomous ground and sea systems.

The Israeli defense forces (IDF) wants different types of unmanned system to be interconnected in order to jointly perform combat missions.

This requirement is a step towards the deployment of fully autonomous ground based unmanned systems that will be capable to "talk" with UAS .

The advanced Israeli made UAS are already fully autonomous. The effort is currently to enable unmanned ground systems (UGS) to have the same capability.

Gnius, a joint company of Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is working to achieve that goal. Brig gen (ret) Yoav Hirsh, the company's chief executive, says that some of Gnius's fully autonomous ground systems will become operational before the end of the year. "These systems will have to be designed to talk with unmanned air systems and with sea unmanned systems. We understand the operational requirement and make an effort to answer it," he says.

The company's "Guardium" UGV is already being tested with systems that will be able to "talk" with similar systems in the air and at sea.

The technology division of the IDF is also working on giving autonomous capabilities to some currently used systems. One of these is the M-113 armored personnel carrier (APC). According to Capt Nir Navi from the robotics unit of the division, this will be achieved by replacing the driver with a "black box" and an electric-mechanical system.

This effort is made with the support of experts from Gnuis. "We will have a prototype at the end of next year," Navi says.

The Israeli civil aviation authority (CAA) has declared more than once that its efforts are mainly focused at rearranging the issues that concern commercial aviation: namely the airlines. This in an effort to gain back the category 1 safety status taken from Israel almost three years ago.

Last week, another general aviation accident claimed lives. Investigation is underway to try and establish the cause for the crash of the Piper Cherokee 6 aircraft at Haifa airport in northern Israel. But one thing is already clear: the CAA has to bring this sector into its everyday focus and fast.

The single-engine Cherokee 6 took off from runway 16 to fly to southern Israel. In the aircraft were four people: three pilots (one of them a flight instructor) and a cadet.

Immediately after takeoff, the pilot reported to the tower that he had a problem and received permission to land. While trying to land, the aircraft hit trees near the runway, crashed and caught fire. The four died immediately.

People that were in the area reported hearing strange noises from the engine immediately after takeoff.

This was the latest in a series of accidents involving light general aviation aircraft in Israel in recent months. While many of the investigations are still underway, it is clear that a full revision of that section is required. The process that is aimed at bringing Israel back to a category 1 status is still very long. The efforts put into this process should not result in any "discounts" to the people involved in general aviation. The strict rules being applied to commercial aviation should apply here and even with increased force.

The problems are known, the CAA has been recently restructured and currently has the means for effective control of general aviation. Small aircraft are important as big ones. Some accidents have no relevance to any control regime, but some have.

Visiting Israeli manufacturers of unmanned air systems (UAS) leaves no doubt that one of their main efforts is to comply with the standards that are being built gradually, to allow the full integration of their products into a civil airspace already crowded with manned aircraft.

This is not a simple task as the regulators themselves have not agreed on the full set of safety standards, but progress is being achieved.

One milestone was achieved at the end of 2010 when the French civil aviation authority DGAC approved the airworthiness of the French army's Harfang UAS for flights in civil airspace.

Until that moment, such flights were approved only in airspace that was closed to other air traffic.

The Harfang is actually the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Heron and is now the French army's most advanced UAS system.

The DGAC's approval, according to Israeli sources, was achieved after tests flight of the UAS with a civil IFF system and a validation of the full redundancy of its remote control system .

Israeli experts expect that following the DGAC approval it is likely that other European countries will enable the IAI Heron to fly in their airspace. But they continue and say that the progress will still be slow, very slow. When some of the UAS are getting bigger with wingspans of passenger aircraft, the doubts and fears that motivate the regulators in different countries are understandable.

But one thing is also very clear: full integration is inevitable as the UAS perform more and more tasks for armed forces and civil organizations.

Scientists sometimes go to places that usually are not explored. In some cases this results in surprising findings. That is exactly what happened when they went to see what goes on in the back yard of European airports.

A study of European air terminals, conducted by the EU-funded Bemosa project, indicates a definite need to improve security decision- making processes.

The study proves that airport personnel do not rely primarily on procedures or rules in emergency cases.

The report contains the first results of an extensive study aimed at obtaining data on how emergencies and security threats are actually handled in airports. The results will be presented at a special workshop on applying human factors to airport security that will be hosted by Bemosa in Belgium on May 25, 2011.

Bemosa's experts concluded that there appeared to be a definite need to improve security decision-making procedures. This was reflected in the clearly observed problems of recognizing a threat and acting upon it.

The report indicates that there appears to be a gap between procedures and actual behaviour when a threat is recognized and especially when it is acted upon.

According to the study only 53.1% of airport employees and 63% of security workers said they put complete trust in security technologies. Only 23.6% of airport employees and 58% of security workers said that when they saw something suspicious they alerted others. A further 54.3% of the workers and 40% of security personal never raised the alarm or called a security code.

The study is aimed at describing real behaviour patterns in order to develop airport staff training programs for improving crisis handling and hazard reduction.

"There appears to be a gap between procedures and actual behaviour when a threat is recognized and especially when acted upon. It seems, that in such cases informal group behaviour is as important as formal procedures," says Professor Alan Kirschenbaum from the Technion in Israel, a world expert in disaster management and initiator and coordinator of Bemosa. "Cases in which procedures are not followed should not necessarily be viewed as a negative phenomenon."

Kirschenbaum adds that highly motivated security personnel show initiative and creativity in handling situations when procedures are not sufficient or relevant. He notes, however, that not following procedures is usually a result of lack of skills or training.

Bemosa (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports) is a European-wide research project aimed at improving security in airports through enhancing the capability of airport authority personnel to correctly detect potential security hazards and reduce false alarms.

Bemosa, which is co-funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, develops a behaviour model that aims to describe how people make security decisions in the face of reality during "normal routine" and crisis situations. This is expected to result in increased security, reduced false alarms and increased profitability.

The only chance small Israeli defence manufacturers have to survive is to join forces domestically and overseas.

Here is a recent and very good example. Innocon is a small unmanned air systems (UAS) manufacturer trying to penetrate the international market where three major Israeli UAS manufacturers are also competing with companies from the USA and Europe.

Innocon has recently teamed with Nostromo Defensa, an Argentinean UAS company. This teaming will enable Innocon to offer its systems to the Argentinean and the South American market.

Innocon will bring to the team its Naviator Flight Computer which, according to the Israeli company, is responsible for all flight aspects including short distance and highly accurate landing, landing capability on wide-ranging of surfaces utilizing a variety of landing gear including wheels, skids, or parachute.

Innocon says that the Naviator technology also enables altitudes and airborne durations normally associated with a large UAS, high precision automatic landings on unpaved and difficult terrain, real time airborne information dissemination to multiple systems users and simultaneous data management for multiple platforms with the use of the company's ground based mission control station. 

At home, Innocon has improved its marketing leverage by teaming with Israeli communications company IMC Microwave Industries.

IMC's communications systems will be offered with Innocon's full range of uas systems. IMC is a private company supplying state-of-the-art RF and Microwave components, Data links, Antennas, Sub-systems and Systems.

The geopolitical circumstances in the Middle East are creating very interesting if not strange situations. One of these is the fact that Jordan's capital Amman has become Israel's hub to the Far East.

EL AL, the Israeli airline, flies to some Far East destinations, using a safe route over the Red Sea. Because of the direct flights the fares on these routes are relatively high.

Many Israelis are flying with Royal Jordanian from Ben-Gurion airport to Queen Alia airport in Amman. From there they take flights operated by the Jordanian airline to far eastern destinations but to many more. These who fly to Europe and the US are crossing the Israeli airspace on their way to their destination. According to the peace treaty Jordan is using the Israeli airspace for westbound flights.

The situation encouraged Israeli airline Israir to enter this market and it will soon begin to operate two daily flights from Ben-Gurion to Queen Alia. These flights will be operated with the ATR 72-500 recently purchased by the airline. In 2010 115,000 Israelis took the short flight from Israel to Jordan and the number increases all the time.

So, Amman has become an "Israeli" hub that many use for cheaper flights. Ben-Gurion can only look enviously over the border. In the current situation in the Middle East, those envious looks will be there for a long time.

Going against the world trend is not possible even in the holy land. While in the real world, airlines merge and unite resources to be more efficient, in Israel three airlines are working hard to survive, each in splendid isolation.

EL AL, Arkia and Israir are operating together a fleet of aircraft that normally serves one very small airline in Europe let alone one of the US giants .

In a small country with a population of less than 8 million, one national airline is enough especially when over 50 foreign airlines are competing in the market.

But when the considerations about operating an airline are not always according to the financial results, that is what happens and it is very strange.

The logical situation is that at least one of the smaller airlines (tiny in international standards) will merge with EL AL, but even if that was on the table for discussion we could expect opposition from the antitrust authority. This authority tends to forget that the real competition to the three Israeli airlines is from the many foreign airlines that operate in the market.

In this absurd situation, EL AL with its medium and long haul network manages for now to show profits. Arkia is trying to get a greater market share with low cost services and Israir is struggling with losses that amounted to appr $14 million in 2009 and $17 million in 2010.

If the emotions are put aside, if the antitrust authority adapts to reality, something good can happen to the Israeli airlines especially when more and more foreign competitors are getting into the market.

And to add some bizarreness to the situation, EL AL has not been able to join one of the aviation alliances. Take this fact with the ones mentioned above, and you get a situation that is more than just strange.

It's a very complicated job and the steps are very small and cautious. The new unmanned air systems (UAS) division of the Israel civil aviation authority (CAA) is beginning to understand how complicated it is to let manned and unmanned platforms to fly in small airspace like the Israeli one.

The division has been recently formed to cope with the growing traffic of UAS in the country's airspace.

Until now, a special technical committee of the CAA handled the issue and was in charge of approving flights of mostly Israeli air force (IAF) uas in the Israeli airspace, especially near areas of heavy commercial or general aviation traffic .

One typical problem studied by the new division is the minimum altitude separation between a manned aircraft and a UAS. Today,  this separation is 1,000 feet and now the division is thinking of doubling it. This is only one of many issues that is being evaluated by the new division but the work is very complicated and decisions are made very slowly.

The Israeli developed UAS are getting smaller and bigger. While the army is introducing battalion and brigade level small UAVs, the IAF is increasing the use of big, heavy UAS like the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Heron-TP which has a wing span of a Boeing 737 .

This double sided situation is complicating the issues that have to be decided by the division without hampering the use of UAS for the everyday security missions flown by the IAF.

The open skies policy of the Israeli ministry of transport is affecting the number of flights to the country and this summer they will reach a peak.

According to data received from the Israeli Airport Authority (IAA) this summer will demonstrate an increase in flights to and from Israel.

The data shows that foreign airlines will operate 413 flights a week to Ben-Gurion international airport, an increase of 9% compared to summer 2010.

This increase is a direct result of the schedules of 57 foreign airlines that have been approved by the Israeli Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

This policy has affected the competition and in spite of this fact more foreign airlines are planning to fly to Israel.

The increasing number of foreign airlines has decreased the share of El Al, the Israeli largest airline, in the airport. Once well over 40 % it will amount this summer to only 38.5% of traffic.

El Al has tried to resist the open skies policy but the skies have been opened and that brought new airlines to fly to Israel and the competition has increased on all routes.

The dedicated electro optical payloads developed in Israel for use on unmanned air systems (UAS) have made these aerial platforms "part of the team". Each player in that team is a very important complementary source for real time data that is needed to create the "big picture" especially crucial in low intensity wars.   

Paradox: in low intensity wars the "big picture" is needed to minimize collateral damage to non-combatants. The people who squeeze the trigger need to understand who is who in a very crowded area, and that requires to see a wide angle picture built by more than one sensor.

Realizing that, the Israeli airforce (IAF) has intensified the training of its combat pilots in working with UAS as real time intelligence sensors.

A senior IAF source recently confirmed that the pilots are being trained to use the intelligence raw data received from UAS payloads. "This is a very crucial tool for a fighter pilot when flying a mission where many of the parameters are quickly changing," the source says.

The source says that the current fighter fleet has almost reached the line where the pilots will have difficulties in receiving more data on their cockpit screens. "One of the main reasons why we want the F-35 so much is the ability of this aircraft to perform real time data fusion. This is the only way to use all the data especially in our region, where reaction time in most cases is very short," the source says.

So the electro optical payloads on the Israeli UAS are getting more capable and they have been designed to work in full harmony with the systems embedded on the IAF manned platforms. Like any other data combining mission, this one is not simple but efforts show results and the UAS are getting more important.

It sounds very trendy when the UAS are getting almost the same status as their manned "counterparts", but this harmony in the skies is not simple. The use of UAS in the same piece of sky over the combat zone is a tricky job and the IAF is allocating a lot of effort to build the needed "laws" and the necessary training.

The Iranian "space programme" dictates the budget Israel has to invest in its anti-ballistic missile defence system. In recent months, the Iranians have increased their spending on the programme and Israel had no choice but to follow with help from the USA.

Iran is investing huge sums of money in a space programme but intelligence sources say that the technology involved will enable the country to develop long range ballistic missiles that could reach Europe.

In recent months the Iranians uncovered a huge launcher, the Safir 1-B, and experts say that it will enable them to launch intercontinental missiles in the future.

Tal Inbar, a senior researcher in the Fisher Institute for Space and Aviation in Israel, says that the Iranians have embarked on a road that will lead to a capability to launch intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the not distant future.

The Iranians displayed four new domestically produced satellites as part of their space programme. The satellites are dubbed Fajr, Rasad, Zafar and Amir Kabir-1.

The Israeli sources say that Iran is making a huge effort to launch advanced imaging satellites.

The Iranian space programme is being conducted in very modern facilities that include a test centre, that according to the Israeli experts can accommodate a 35-40m-long missile.

While the Iranians are pouring money into what they call space programme, Israel is continuing with the development of the Arrow-3 advanced anti ballistic missile system and recently has conducted an intercept test in a US range with an improved block of the operational Arrow-2 .

This race is swallowing huge sums of money and at this stage shows no signs of even slowing down.

At this moment they are "corridor talks" but they may change their nature if the situation of the US F-35 programme does not take a different angle soon, one that will restore the confidence in the projected timetable.

Each piece of information about more possible delays in the delivery dates of the Lockheed Martin stealth fighter affects the nature of these talks.

With the anticipated delivery dates delayed again and again, the Israeli air force (IAF) may look seriously for a "gap filler" that will sustain its capabilities with the F-35s still on the assembly lines in the USA .

Last year, Israel and the USA signed the Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) for the supply of 20 F-35s to the IAF.

The deliveries of these aircraft are expected to begin in 2017.If there are more signs that these expectations cannot be met, the IAF will have to make some very important decisions. All the options will be on the table, according to well informed sources. These will include more upgrades of the IAF's current combat aircraft fleet or the purchase of a limited number of advanced versions of currently used fighters.