Jerusalem – Israelis Developing Remote Controlled Weapon Systems

Jerusalem – Israel defence industries, pioneers in many ways are working on a futuristic battlefield scenario where armies use remotely operated robotic weapons on land, air and sea without a trace of any human soldier anywhere on the battleground.

This concept once a part of science fiction could?soon become a reality with self-detonating grenades, thinking bullets and robot warriors making humans on the battle frontline a thing of the past, daily Ha’aretz reported.

The first robotic systems are already being used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and other armies across the world and only budgetary constraints seem to keeping this away from becoming a reality, the report said.

But now, such a weaponry system could be in place in 2020s, the paper said.

A helicopter that spots suspicious movement on the ground will, for instance, would be able to relay a command to a drone to photograph the site and transmit the picture in real time to troops on the ground and to the command posts in the rear.

Soldiers manning the specialised warfare computers will then be able to mark their target by its coordinates and launch missiles with the help of lasers from dozens of kilometres away to be guided by GPS, ensuring accuracy and destruction of the target.

The systems will be coded to prevent enemy interception of the operation.

Other possible developments in the not so distant future, could see spy satellites, that today weigh several tonnes, shrinking down to anything between one and 100 kilogrammes or less, with engines the size of postage stamps.

Infantry rifles will also be computerised and fire “smart” rounds telling them when and where to explode. New rockets being thought of would also be ‘able to think by themselves’ to enhance their accuracy.

The new systems being developed for the Israeli military’s demands which have two cornerstone, miniaturisation and accuracy.

Though secrecy shrouds the new weapon systems development, but reports said these include remote controlled battleships, unmanned land vehicles and fighters and missiles and bombs which drop on targets with pin-point accuracy.

“The Protector, which we are already marketing, is a vessel that sails all over in all kinds of places without a living soul on board,” Roni Postman, Vice President for R&D at Rafael Advanced Defence Systems told the daily.

“It can get close up to a terrorists’ boat, address it through a loudspeaker, and open fire at it. In the past, a thing like this required a boat with seven or eight crewmen who were in constant danger,” Postman said.

This type of remote control is one of the clearest characteristics of the future battlefield. It will be a battlefield devoid of troops, with vehicles doing what soldiers have done until now,” he added.

Unmanned boats, land vehicles and aircraft will be either controlled remotely or will function autonomously, pre-programmed to carry out a mission from start to finish, such as reaching an enemy bunker, transmitting a photograph back to a command post, launching a projectile at it, and returning, or blowing itself up to destroy the target and the people inside it.

Another characteristic of weapons now undergoing development in Israel is pin-point accuracy for urban warfare, especially in a world that has become less accepting of “collateral damage”.

“Whereas up to a decade ago, planes would drop bombs that destroy everything within a 20 or 30-meter radius without any restraints in order to hit a certain target. That’s all over today,” Postman said.

He said “We are working on capabilities that will make it possible to place a missile launched 70 kilometres away through a specific window of a certain house”.

Rafael is also developing cross-platform systems for armies looking to cut down on costs.

Among many plans in the pipeline one is that a missile capable of being fired from a helicopter, should also fit in a fixed-wing plane, a boat, or a land vehicle and can destroy tanks and above-ground structures and bunkers, the report said.

“The miniaturisation trend that has taken hold of the civilian market enables the introduction into military systems of things we couldn’t even dream of before, because of their size, weight and volume,” the defence executive said.

“This is a worldwide tendency and future battlefields will be full of weapons and other items that are much smaller than they have been until now. This is especially useful in unmanned air vehicles, whose weight-carrying capacity is limited by the size of their engines, the amount of fuel they must carry and the altitudes they have to attain, Postman said.

“Every gram counts. If they are loaded down with heavy systems, they won’t be able to carry out their missions,” he noted.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), leaders in developing unmanned aeriel vehicles has developed the Mosquito, a UAV with a 40-centimetre wingspan and a silent engine that can be launched from the shoulder of a single soldier.

Taking a notch further, the future battlefield is also likely to include outer space.

“GPS based technology fed by satellites are already becoming a fundamental element in future military systems.

Moreover, the ability to equip satellites with IAI produced radar that sees through clouds will enable every field commander to obtain, in daylight and at night and in any weather conditions, a picture of his target,” the report said.

Space based weapons, or satellites, will also serve as a component in projects for the destruction of long-range missiles from distant enemies.

Such a scenario could see space wars a real possibility with satellites becoming a critical means in military operations and its defence just as critical.

Israel is one of seven members of the club of countries that have proved their independent ability to put satellites into orbit, alongside the United States, Russia, India, China, Japan and Western Europe, which has a unified space programme based on French capabilities.

IAI is working on developing integrated systems of up to 10 smaller satellites that will upgrade inter-satellite communications and the data picked up by land stations.

“Within this group, technology-wise, we are second only to the United States, and in certain niches we are even number one, especially in mini-observation satellites,” Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency (ISA), told the daily referring to an observation satellite developed by IAI and Rafael, which also serves espionage purposes and weighs just 300 kilogrammes.

The American substitute weighs three or four tonnes. The need to reduce the size of the satellite sprang from the fact that unlike other countries which launch their orbiters eastward and can therefore take advantage of the speed of the earth’s spin, Israel launches westward for regional security reasons, against the direction of the earth’s rotation.

As a result, the Israeli launches lose a great deal of energy.

The solution was to reduce the size of the satellite and all of its component parts, its engine and photographic instruments, the scientist said.