Drone Sweet Drone

Mandatory reading from Fox News.

Reuters

A single Syrian missile strike on a bakery near Hama killed more than 60 innocent civilians last week, so how did Israel manage to fire more than 1,500 high powered missiles into densely-populated Gaza in November, with the total loss of 161 lives, of which 90 have been acknowledged by Hamas itself as active combatants? (we know there were at least 101 terrorists – Aussie Dave)

The numbers speak for themselves, but very little credit has so far been given by foreign governments, NGOs, and the international media for the care taken by the Israeli military to avoid collateral damage during its recent vicious engagement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters.

‘Major G,’ the chief instructing officer of the Israeli UAV (Drone) School, spoke exclusively to Foxnews.com on condition of anonymity about Israel’s hi-tech drone capabilities, his military’s terms of engaging the enemy, and aspects of his direct role in the recent Gaza conflict in which Israel strongly contends most non-combatant deaths were as a result of Palestinian civilians being routinely used as human shields by Hamas.

“Drones (UAVs – Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), play a very important and essential role in the protection of the State of Israel,” ‘Major G’ explained. “The great advantage of the drone is the ability to stay in the air for up to 40 hours at a time above the relevant area to perform ISR missions – Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.”

Once a drone identifies a target, its operator is then responsible for setting in motion a sometimes dizzyingly fast chain of events that may result in a missile strike taking place.

“Using commercial apertures and video cameras, we have the ability to work with both daytime and night time infrared images. My Heron1 drone does only ISR, but I have the ability to designate a target to another aircraft. This capability is very important because I am able to stay above and investigate the target for a long time, clear it of uninvolved civilians, and only when there is a clear path of fire do I call for the F16 or Apache helicopter,” said ‘Major G.’

Critics of Israel’s actions invariably suggest a lack of concern about collateral damage when air strikes are used, but ‘Major G’ revealed in detail how a drone operator sitting somewhere in Israel can clear a target on the ground in Gaza of innocent civilians.

“In a lot of cases we have regular houses where in the basement there is a lot of ammunition, bombs and missiles. The house is populated sometimes with the families having willingly cooperated with the Hamas, and in other cases they don’t have any choice; Hamas forces this on them. In cases where there are people inside a house or building we never strike the target without prior warning. We make phone calls, send leaflet flier warnings, and sometimes use a technique called ‘Knock On the Roof,’ where we fire very, very small, very precise tiny bombs onto the edge of the roof and then they (the family) know that the attack is about to begin and everybody can go outside.”

But even the best intelligence and prior warnings cannot always prevent civilian casualties caught up in the fog of war, as happened in the widely reported case of the Dalou family in Gaza, nine of whom were killed by a single Israeli missile strike.

FoxNews.com asked the Israel Defense Force for an official explanation on the loss of life at the Dalou house and received the following statement:

“The IDF targets only terror related sites based on carefully collected intelligence. All possible precautions were taken as the civilians in Gaza were not targets in this operation. The Dalou residence was known to the IDF intelligence as a hideout of a senior militant operative in Hamas’ rocket launching infrastructure. While the IDF regrets the loss of life on both sides, the responsibility ultimately lies with terror operatives who use the civil population as human shields when using civilian buildings as hideouts, or to store weaponry.”

Read the whole thing. Then spread it far and wide.

 

5 thoughts on “Drone Sweet Drone”

  1. Very nice.
    My only criticism:
    \”in the strike that killed the high ranking Hamas terrorist mastermind, the spark that finally ignited November’s hostilities.\”
    Just once, it would be nice for the media to acknowledge the hundreds of rockets fired into Israel, paralysing communities\’ lives as \”the spark that finally ignited November\’s hostilities\”

  2. E Pluribus Beagle

    Why paint a picture at all? Be quiet about it and leave the savages to slaughter one another to the last. Our enemies still condemn us and call our precision weakness. Better we leave open the possibility that eventually a neutron bomb will drop on them.

  3. People ask me how I defend Israel, but condemn the US military. Israel uses its drones very responsibly and maintains a 1:2 civ:com ratio. The US just wantonly butchers people with drones, calls children dogs as official policy, and maintains a 50:1 civ:com ratio. Israel acts in defense. The US acts in unceasing offense.

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