From the Liveblog of
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Deadly Houthi drone spent 16 hours in flight before reaching Tel Aviv on Friday; in vital minutes, IAF radar operators were focused on drone from Iraq
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The Iranian-made drone launched by the Houthis in Yemen at Tel Aviv on Friday morning traveled more than 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) to reach Israel, according to an Israeli Air Force probe.
The modified Iranian-made Samad-3 used a non-direct flight path, which may have contributed to it not being classified as a threat, which resulted in it not being intercepted. It struck a residential building in Tel Aviv, killing an Israeli man.
According to the IAF investigation, the explosive-laden drone apparently flew west from Yemen over the Red Sea, reaching Eritrea, before then flying north over Sudan and Egypt and reaching the Mediterranean Sea. The drone then approached Tel Aviv from the west.
It was only at this point that the drone showed up on Israeli radar as an unidentified target. In hindsight, the drone had been tracked for six minutes in a row while it approached Tel Aviv from the direction of the sea, before dropping in and out of the radar for several minutes after that, according to the probe.
The drone, according to the probe, was in the air for some 16 hours, flying at a speed of between 80 and 100 knots, or 148-185 kilometers per hour.
The IAF was aware of that the Houthis had such capabilities but had no prior information on the attack itself.
The probe found that if the target had been classified as a suspected drone when it was first identified, then the IAF would have had enough time to engage it, using fighter jets or ground or sea-based air defense systems. Instead, the target was not classified as a threat, due to a human error by the air traffic control operators, and it hit Tel Aviv.
The human operators who analyze the IAFs radar were at the time in the middle of tracking a drone launched by another Iran-backed group, from Iraq. That drone was shot down by fighter jets. The IAF has explained that the air traffic control operators also frequently see targets drop in and out of the radar, which in some cases are birds or distortions caused by clouds. Additionally, the IAF’s focus has been on targets approaching Israel from the north, east, and south, and less so from the west.
Following the attack, the IAF has now doubled the number of operators analyzing the radar systems, so that targets are not missed and are correctly classified. It has also increased aerial patrols, especially in the Mediterranean, to better detect incoming threats.
