In Israel, Anti-Sniper Gear Spots Rockets
SDEROT, Israel - A repurposed sensor system that didn't fully meet its design goal is being credited with saving Israeli lives and shoring up citizen support for the government's three-week-old anti-rocket war with Hamas.
Security and civic officials here and in other border area communities said the Color Red early warning system, which warns civilians of imminent air attack, has bolstered resilience among the 900,000-some Israeli citizens within rocket range, and denied Hamas the opportunity to replicate the national panic and high-impact hits that delivered Hizbollah its perceived victory in the 2006 Lebanon war.
Punishing airstrikes and intense air-land battle reduced, but did not halt, the rocket attacks launched from Gaza. But the threat of expanded combat and the potential toppling of the Hamas regime allowed Israel to set the terms of the cease-fire it now seeks; a threat rendered credible, experts here say, by civilian staying power.
Ze'ev Livne, a major general in the IDF reserves and former founding commander of the IDF's Homefront Command, credited the combination of Color Red, reinforced public shelters, and a broad and coordinated concept of operations that links muncipal authorities and first responders.
"All relevant levels learned their lessons from Lebanon, and they functioned as they were trained to do in emergency situations. We all understood that a protected homefront translates into more time and maneuvering room for war fighters and commanders to get their jobs done across the border," Livne said. "If Hamas had managed to hit a shopping center or a school or a group of soldiers awaiting deployment, all our operational achievements would have been viewed differently."
Out-of-the-Box Thinking
The heart of the Color Red system is the Believer search mechanism, developed around 2000 by Rafael and Israel's Ministry of Defense to locate the sources of Palestinian sniper fire that plagued a southern suburb of Jerusalem during the second intifada, or uprising.
Defense and industry sources here said the Believer could detect snipers who opened fire, but lacked the immediate, automatic firing response necessary to kill them before they fled the scene.
Instead of scrapping the project, however, MoD decided to put Believer sensors around this southern border town of Sderot, which had just begun to experience Gaza-launched rocket attacks.
"The sniper problem went away once our ground forces entered Bethlehem and surrounding areas. But then we had to deal with the Qassem [rocket] problem, and [Believer] turned out to be the answer," anMoD official said.
After some trial and error, developers managed to calibrate sensor placement to fairly accurately determine launching points. Then they integrated two types of radars - including the Elta fire-control radar developed for the defunct Nautilus tactical high-energy laser program - to track rockets' trajectories and determine their impact points. In more recent years, MoD has incorporated software, loosely modeled on the Arrow missile defense program's Citron Tree command-and-control center, to help classify targets and hone projected impact points.
During Operation Cast Lead, the anti-rocket campaign that began Dec. 27, the Homefront Command operators of the Color Red system were able to distinguish shorter-range Qassems from the longer-range Grad rockets launched from the Gaza Strip.
"The technology got so good that we can now detect the angle and impact point in the first second of the Color Red alarm," said Yair Farjun, regional council chairman of Hof Ashkelon, a collection of farming communities bordering Gaza.
Over the past seven years, the Hof Ashkelon area has been hit by more than 1,500 Qassem rockets and mortar shells, most of which have fallen into open areas. Since the Dec. 27 start of Operation Cast Lead, the area has been hit by four to six rocket strikes per day.
According to Farjun, the Color Red alarm is sounded almost immediately upon launch, allowing the 14,000 citizens under his jurisdiction a "scant, but sufficient" 15 seconds to run for shelters. In areas further afield, such as Yavne, Ashdod and Beersheba, citizens have up to 60 seconds to seek shelter.
Sources here credited Color Red for the very low overall Israeli casualties - three dead and dozens of injuries, most of them slight - from more than 620 launches during the three-week campaign.
They warn, however, that in the hours before a proposed ceasefire takes effect, Hamas could launch a massive salvo of rockets.
Farjun noted that recent upgrades of the Color Red system have reduced the geographic slice in which the alarm is sounded from an 8- or 9-kilometer radius to 3.
"The older system had a huge polygon, something like 90 degrees. But today, the alarm area has narrowed to a 25-degree angle, and this obviously has released a lot of citizens from unnecessary, nerve-shattering alarms," he said.
Multilayered Warnings
Lt. Col. Ofer Shoshan, one of the Homefront Command officer deployed at the central underground command facility near here, noted that Color Red is the most obvious element of the multilayered system deployed in the current campaign.
"When taken together - the organization, the operating concept, the coordination with local authorities and the very responsible and mature behavior of civilians - it's fair to say we made a very significant and maybe even decisive contribution" to the war effort, Shoshan said.
Another technology activated for the first time during the Cast Lead campaign is Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) MC4 system, an extensive data dissemination and mapping system for emergency response. Developed by IAI's MLM Division, MC4 was installed in prototype form earlier last year in Israel's southern city of Ashkelon, where dozens of Qassem and Grad rockets fell during the campaign.
Uri Sinai, MLM general manager, said the system's voluminous data base includes detailed demographic information on area residents; trained medical, educational and counseling personnel; and precise three-dimensional mapping of schools, critical infrastructure, medical facilities and other sites relevant to response and rescue efforts. Once alerted by Color Red, the IAI system kicks in, estimating probable scenarios, providing detailed lists of specific residents to be affected, and recommended courses of action.
"The value added of this system is knowing which kind of help to send and who to turn to the moment we're made aware of an incoming attack. ... The worst thing is to send the wrong kind of responders to the wrong place," Sinai said.
Yossi Greenfeld, a security officer in Ashkelon, said the computerized system translated into decisions made sooner and more tailored to a specific emergency situation.
"Everyone involved has the same picture and can refer to the same details, and this allows for rapid information transmission, processing and better execution," he said. ■
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