Puppet Masters
The drone was reportedly spotted by Israeli air defenses as it was approaching Israeli airspace.
"Moments ago two Patriot air defense missiles were fired towards a drone which infiltrated Israeli airspace from Syria," the military said in a statement on Sunday.
An Israeli fighter jet was scrambled that bolted after the intruder and fired an air-to-air missile at it - also failing to hit the target, which flew back into Syrian airspace it had come from. The drone penetrated four kilometers into Israeli airspace, Haaretz reported.
The launches reportedly triggered air raid alarms across northern Israel.
A 14-year-old girl was injured by debris from a Patriot missile that fell on the territory of Ayelet Hashahar, one of Israel's oldest kibbutz's near the Golan Heights, according to local media.
A Channel 10 report says that a Hezbollah source claimed that the drone flight had been "part of an operation against Israel." However, the IDF did assign blame to any party on Sunday.
An IDF command investigating the incident has contacted the Russian task force in Syria to try to establish who the airspace violator belongs to, reports Israel's TV channel 9, citing a military source.
Comment: The reason for the failure is simple: the Patriot system, like Iron Dome, doesn't work, plain and simple. This has been known from the beginning, but true to form, the U.S. and Israel went ahead with it. Profits over functionality. All it's good for is giving Israelis a false sense of security, and lack of security, as it can be used to defend against imaginary Hamas rockets, simultaneously demonizing Palestinians and keeping Israelis in a fearful, bunker mentality.
Reader Comments
Looks like the Israeli citizens running the anti missile factories back in the USA cheated their own people.
- This is IRONY -
The truth here is that Russia has developed wide-beam electromagnetic weapons that disable electronic circuits in nearby missiles, planes, ships, and anywhere else. Remember the USS Donald Cole? This drone incursion was quite unnecessary for intelligence gathering - Russia also has spy satellites quite capable of telling them all they want to know about the ground situation in the Golan Heights. No, it was rather a test of the beam weapons to see of the EM jamming system could disable American ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles, with which Israel is equipped. And it looks as if the Russian test was 100% successful. I wonder if the Pentagon realizes what just happened here, or not?
Ha,ha ha. Probably an American drone testing their system...
Damn, back to the drawing board we'll sell them an upgrade.