The fire kites terror from the Gaza Strip continued on Wednesday in Kissufim and Be’ery, with firefighters and farmers fighting the raging flames together. Meanwhile, over the past few two weeks, a group of Israeli civilians has been mobilized to employ drones to stop the burning kites that cross the border and land in Israeli agricultural lands in the Gaza vicinity. They have already succeeded in downing hundreds of enemy kites and helium balloons and their work at the border significantly reduced the number of fires. Now the IDF must decide whether to allocate the necessary resources for its continued operations.
This initiative was born by civilians, drone aviation professionals, who persuaded the army to give them an opportunity to fight the new terror weapon coming from Gaza, Channel 2 News reported. At first no one knew how to deal with them, but the results on the ground spoke for themselves – in two weeks they took down more than 350 kites and balloons, and on the days they operate near the fence, the number of fires falls dramatically.
The entire drone team, incidentally, is made up of about ten people.
The work in pairs: one observes and the other flies the drone, and together they say they succeed in hitting the attacking kite 40 seconds from the time of detection.
The rumors about their success are spreading quickly and more drone pilots want to join. The question is whether the IDF HR would allocate reserve duty days to expand this unit which, at the moment, are the only ones who manage to spoil the Gaza terrorists’ efforts to burn agricultural lands alongside the border.
For now, the fires in the Gaza envelope do not stop. To date, hundreds of arsons have been recorded, in which more than 6,200 acres were decimated – about a quarter of the area within range of the Gaza Strip.
@ Bear Klein:
I would prefer the actions which would chase them completely away into Sinai or somewhere else other than Israel. All we’re doing is containing, and retaliating, and warning and warning and warning. What good does it do after the 191st time.
They will never cease permanently, which means that the Kibbutzim and towns along the periphery will never know peace for any given length of time. This is an intolerable situation’ Jews have lived for centuries in intolerable conditions, but no reason to have the same in our Holy Land. The Ghetto is behind us, why suffer as if it were still here.
@ Edgar G.:
All I can seeboth with the kits, shelling from Gaza and many other things, the mamzerim devise cheap ways to do maximum damage causing Israel to use or devise very expensive means to combat them. Each time a $10 mortar shell looks dangerous, it takes a $100,000 complex missile to destroy it. Kites cost nothing to build and few ounces of gasoline in a throwaway bottle. Drones cost hundreds of thousands to build, the simplest of them, not to mention the technical expertise to make the machine tools and dies, as well as the manufacture and assembly. Not counting the launching apparatus and viewing technology required.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Israel should cut off the water to Gaza and fly their own fire bomb balloons.
Balloon bombs are an extremely effective weapon. During World War II, Japan launched them against the continental U.S. from 12,000 miles away. Quite a few of them touched down and exploded on American soil. Thousands of acres of forest were destroyed and thirty American civilians were killed. The US intelligence service (OSS) succeeded in putting an end to the balloon bomb campaign by persuading radio stations and newspapers all accross the country to keep absolutely mum about the attacks. The Japanese, hearing nothing about them on U.S. radio, erroneously concluded that none of their balloon bombs had made it to U.S. soil, and ended the campaign. The guy who organized the silencing of the U.S. media, Carleton Osgood I think his name was, wrote that thousands of U.S. civilians could have been killed and mass panic could have swept the U.S. if the public, and the Japanese, had known what was going on. Regretably, Israel can’t keep the baloon and kite bombs secret from Hamas. And these bombs must be a thousand times more damaging from five miles away than from 12,000 miles away.
The IDF could put a stop to this by flying their own balloon-bombs and kite-bombs into Gaza. But imagine the international outcry? Still, might be worth it. By simply resorting to whatever weapons Hamas uses with the same weapons, Israel could probably put an end to Hamas. There would be a fierce international outcry. But maybe Israel should go ahead anyway. The real reason it won’t happen, though, is that the IDF high command are humanitarian fanatics as well as highly sympathetic to the “Palestinian cause.” Not that Israel receives any international sympathy for this.
If Hamas fails to stop the terrorist actions. Preemptively start blowing up the buildings where the Hamas leaders live. This is what stopped the last war. Clearly the current Israeli leadership has no interest in going into Gaza and routing the terrorists.
Maybe they are right about that until the Iranians and Hezbollah are neutralized.
Arsonists = terrorists. Deterrence is the only thing that will stop these arsonists.
The IDF needs to use drones or snipers to shoot those seen with kites near the border in Gaza not just take down the kites hit or miss.
That’s great, about 1 in 5.or 6. How about going to the fount. Destroying those who are making and releasing them along with a carefully plotted surround area.. I’m sure Israel can actually see them preparing and releasing them, or could it they made the effort,