Page 176 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

176 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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Aeronautical Company. They were heavily used over Communist China and major
flaws, technical and operating, were discovered and corrected.
The Vietnam War was the first time that UAVs, the drones in particular, were used
extensively in reconnaissance and combat roles. At first they were used for “simple”
day recee missions, and later they were equipped with night recee equipment, com-
munication and electronic intelligence.
Over the last few years, it has been Israel that was responsible for much of the de-
velopment that has happened in the UAV sector. The Hunter and the Pioneer, which
are used extensively by the US military and other western forces, are direct deriva-
tives of Israeli systems.
When and why did the IAF start its UAV operation?
Right after the “6 days War” (June 1967), Israel was engaged in what is known as
th
“the War of Attrition” (that ended on Aug. 7 1970). At the first stages this war was
around the Suez Canal and land affected mainly IDFs ground forces. In a later phase
(mid 1969) the IAF became the main operator in the battle zone, and at that phase we
encountered the ground to air Russian AAA and SAM systems that were deployed by
the Egyptians and the Syrians.
The IAF has suffered a few aircraft (A4s, F4s, transport) losses as well as some
crews, and was looking for means that would allow continuing operational activity
in the very hostile environment. As usual, various techniques and tactics were devel-
oped; among them was the study of the Unmanned Aircraf, mainly for the reconnais-
sance missions which were quite intensive.
Being a former reconnaissance expert, with a lot of operational experience in the
1960s’ and flying actively F-4s in air/air and air/ground missions, I was no stranger
to the operational atmosphere and needs, and with my engineering degree and ex-
perience in Weapon systems development, I was given the task of the IAF Program
Manager for the study, implication and deployment of the UAV.
This took place in December 1970; I was a Lt. Col and had to report to Gen.
Benny Peled who became the IAF CIC in mid 1973.
What we had in mind was to define and find a platform that could answer the
operational need of delivering (or bringing) vertical photo images, covering enough
range to answer the large areas to be monitored, being able to do various profiles:
low-low, high-low-high, etc. and the raison d’etre: a platform that does not leave
p.o.ws and widows behind, even in case of mission failure. We didn’t know very
much about what’s going on in this area and learning that most of the European ac-
tivity in this field is in the Aerial Targets we focused our search in the US.
Since time was very crucial, we decided that we won’t commence a development
program but would rather adopt an existing platform and perform the minimum en-
gineering changes to fit it to our operational requirements.
As published in the Wikipedia a great advance was achieved in drone technology
and operational practice during the Vietnam War. A series of fast track adaptations
of an existing target drone resulted in a system whose effectiveness was beyond