Page 178 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

178 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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plane we cannot develop the idea that it can be treated as a toy. And since we argued
on a very small number and with my consent to use grounded pilots, it worked.
I mention this because a few years later, when we developed the Mini RPVs-we
did use model aircraft fans in some piloting tasks.
Proving the capability and showing confidence are not enough, because we could
easily stay stuck and forgotten in the remote base in the Sinai unless we convince
the command that we should get the orders for operational missions. The fact that at
that time (Oct. 1971).
I became a branch-commander in the Operations Division, helped the unit be-
cause I was able to convince my colleagues that they (the UAV Sqd.) should get a
fair share in the reconnaissance missions.
In 1972, a small number of Northrop MQM-74 (Chucker) were bought and ab-
sorbed as a flight (sector) in the Sqd.. These were target drones and were meant to
be used as decoys.
The “Yom Kippur” war (Oct.1973) put the first UAV Sqd. into full operational
service. But at the end of this 3 weeks war most of the platforms were lost, perform-
ing a number of successful reconnaissance missions (see SA-2 photo) and a great
number of “suicide missions” as decoys for the SAMs.
Right after the war, the Sqd. Experts have developed with the approval of the AF
technical Div. a substitute for the Reconnaissance need by transforming the MQM-
74 Target Drone to a recee platform. Installing in it a MiniPan camera, the “birds”
were ground launched, flew by a program and had quite a nice record in bringing
back the photos although their technical reliability wasn’t very high, and that’s an
understatement.
I came back to the Base this time as the base commander and demanded that the
AF will conduct an inquiry in every single case of loss, exactly as if it was a manned
air craft – the results were very effective: first we’ve learned, after talking to USN
operators in Point Mogu (Ca.) that our rate of success is similar to theirs, and that we
don’t have a operating default. The involvement of the HQ technical Div made them
look at and treat the system as part of the active arsenal, which was a very important
step towards the future. On the operational hand, we‘ve learned that most of the
flights were a success, we didn’t lose birds because of AAA or SAMs, being small,
fast and flying low made the penetration easier and hardly noticed, not like the larger
124I. This too was a lesson that had great implications on our future developments.
Another lesson and a very convincing one was learned: the main achievement of
the introductory first years of operation was that even if a mission fails, you don’t
lose your crews and don’t have widows and families to take care of, which is why
we decided, back in 1970, to start the program.
A new contract for additional 124Is and Firebees was signed and at that time some
of our people, of the Sqd.. And base level, officers and a few enlisted men, came out
with some ideas and got permission to work, at the industry (IAI and Tadiran) on
developing the idea of a much smaller RPV with real time intelligence capabilities.