Israeli Air Force aviation defeats an Iranian manufac- tured Unmanned Aerial Vehicle trying to break the Israeli airspace along the Golan line. The reconnaissance drone - which is not armed - according to what the IDF officials reported had taken off a Damascus runway in Syria, was demolished using the US Patriot anti-aircraft system.
The Killed UAV was intercepted by Israeli air defense after breaking what is coded as the 'Bravo' line: the 'bearing' line that marks the Syrian border through a demilitarized zone. The "Bravo" airspace is still considered Israeli, so IDF "has decided to intercept it" and break it down with a single SAM (surface-to-air missile) launched by a Patriot battery located in the north of the country, near the city of Safed.
The abduction was officially reported by IDF spokeswoman Colonel Yonatan Conricus.
The route from Syria
According to Israeli sources, the drone would take off from an airstrip located in Damascus, Syria, but "as we have understood," Conricus adds, "the flight was operated by the Hezbollah Shiite militia." These findings have been reached by Israeli military intelligence officials claiming to have 'identified' the drone route based on the array of allocated sensors in the area and on the basis of 'years of Hezbollah group monitoring experience'.
The dropped drone
Currently Iran and Hezbollah can deploy different types of reconnaissance UAVs such as the Ababil-3: capable of flying at a maximum altitude of 4.600 meters with an autonomy of 8 hours of flight, and the "Fotros": with an autonomy of 25 hours and a triple ceiling and an operational range for 'reconnaissance and combat' of 1.250 miles: therefore within Israel's reach.
On the other hand, several other models of Iranian drone manufacturing do not know the actual operation and capacity, but there has been a growing potential of Iran in developing UAVs capable of competing with their foreign counterparts .
The Patriot defense system
US PATRIOT Air Defense Manufacturing System - Acronym of Phased Array TRACKING TO INTERCEPT OF TARGET - is the main SAM system used by the United States and its allies, based on a multiple launcher connected to a radar Phased Array capable of intercepting missiles, planes and drones.
Colonel Conricus stated that the State of Israel, because of the possibility of infiltration from the Golan line, deployed hunting bombers in the surrounding area, which was not used because the system Patriot has been rated as 'effective'.
Previous cases of use for violating Israeli airspace 31 August of 2014 an anti-aircraft battery PATRIOT launched a missile to knock down a Syrian UAV flying over the Golan Heights. The following month was used to break Sukhoi Su-24 of the Syrian air force that had penetrated into Israeli airspace. In July of 2016, the Israeli Air Force launched two missiles Patriot to break down a pair of drones that had violated Israeli airspace near the Syrian border - what had been supposed to be a Hizbullah drone proved to be a Russian UAV mistakenly penetrated into Israel's heavens. This suggests that the 'reply' to any other infiltration and violation will be the same.
(photo: web / Raytheon)
