הילה מורן

11 Nov

A Spice bomb does not need GPS to find its target. It carries a picture of it

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: Rafael's Spice kit turns an ordinary unguided bomb into a precision weapon that steers by comparing what its camera sees with reference images stored before takeoff. GPS and inertial navigation are a backup, not the main method, which is why jamming hurts it far less than most people assume. The usual story about precision bombs goes like this: a satellite tells the bomb where it is, the bomb flies to a set of coordinates, and anyone who jams GPS turns it back into a dumb iron weight. That story fits a lot of guided weapons. It does not…

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01 Nov

Arrow 3 carries no explosive warhead, and that is why it works in space

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: Arrow 3 destroys ballistic missiles by physically ramming them above the atmosphere, with no explosive charge on board. At closing speeds of several kilometers per second, the collision itself releases more energy than a warhead of the same weight could. Ask most people how a missile interceptor works and they describe an explosion. A rocket flies close to the threat, a warhead detonates, shrapnel does the rest. Read also: Your phone did not lose GPS over Tel Aviv. It was told a convincing lie · The cheapest thing in the sky is the hardest thing to shoot down…

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19 Oct

Your phone did not lose GPS over Tel Aviv. It was told a convincing lie

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: GPS jamming drowns the satellite signal in noise, so receivers simply lose their fix. Spoofing is different and more dangerous: it feeds the receiver fake signals, so it reports a confident, wrong position. Militaries counter both with inertial navigation, multi-constellation receivers and antennas that ignore signals from the wrong direction. Since late 2023, drivers in central and northern Israel have opened Waze and found themselves at Beirut airport. Most people called it "GPS jamming." Technically, that is the wrong word. Read also: The cheapest thing in the sky is the hardest thing to shoot down · Most of…

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07 Oct

The cheapest thing in the sky is the hardest thing to shoot down

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: a hobby quadcopter costing a few hundred dollars is a worse air defense problem than a ballistic missile, because it flies slow and low, carries almost no radar signature and no heat plume, and arrives in numbers that make interceptor economics collapse. The answers being fielded are jammers, guns and lasers, not another missile. Air defense intuition runs backwards. People assume the fast, expensive, high-flying threat is the hard one. It is actually the easy one. A ballistic missile announces itself with a bright launch, a predictable arc and a radar cross section you cannot hide, and the…

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27 Sep

Most of an air defense engagement is the decision not to fire

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: an interceptor is the visible part of air defense, but the expensive engineering sits in the radar and the battle management computer that decide which rockets are worth shooting at. In a heavy salvo, the software ignores most incoming rounds on purpose, because they are already falling on empty ground. Watch any clip of a rocket barrage and the story writes itself: rockets go up, interceptors go up, the sky flashes. The part nobody films is a computer sorting dozens of tracks in a few seconds and rejecting most of them. That rejection is the product. קראו גם:…

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14 Sep

The best tank armor on the battlefield stops nothing on its own

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: the Trophy system does not thicken a tank's steel. It watches for an incoming rocket or missile, calculates the intercept in milliseconds, and fires a burst of pellets to kill the threat a few meters before impact. Israel has fielded it on Merkava tanks since 2011, and it changed how crews think about survivability. Ask most people how a tank survives a hit and they picture heavier plating. That answer is a generation out of date. A shaped-charge warhead punches through more armor than any vehicle can realistically carry, so the winning move is to never take the…

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02 Sep

Spike Is Not One Missile, and That Is Exactly the Point

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: Spike is a family of guided missiles, not a single weapon. Each version covers a different range, from a few hundred meters to dozens of kilometers, and many share one guidance idea: a fiber-optic or electro-optical link that lets the operator watch and steer the missile after launch. That flexibility is why it sits on infantry tripods, vehicles, helicopters, and ships. People picture a missile as one fixed thing. Spike breaks that idea. The name covers a whole ladder of weapons built by Rafael, each tuned for a distinct job, and the differences matter far more than the…

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24 Aug

Iron Dome gets the headlines, but David’s Sling stops the threats that would actually level a building

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: Iron Dome handles short-range rockets, yet it was never built for the heavier ballistic missiles and cruise missiles aimed at Israeli cities. That job belongs to David's Sling, the middle interceptor layer developed by Rafael, which fills the gap between Iron Dome and the Arrow system. Ask most people to name Israel's air defense and they say Iron Dome. It is famous, it is photogenic, and it works. It is also the smallest piece of the picture. Iron Dome intercepts rockets flying a few dozen kilometers. The missiles that carry the largest warheads, or that arrive from Iran…

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11 Aug

The Combat Laser Will Not Retire Iron Dome, and Cloud Cover Is the Reason

הילה מורןביטחון

In short: A high-energy laser like Iron Beam fires for a few dollars a shot, so people assume it makes interceptor missiles obsolete. It does not. Weather, beam dwell time, and single-target focus keep older systems in the mix for years. The pitch sounds final. A laser costs roughly three to five dollars per engagement, a Tamir interceptor runs tens of thousands, so the math looks settled. Retire the expensive rockets and let photons do the work. That story collapses the moment a rain cloud rolls in. קראו גם: The single dome you imagine protecting a city does not exist…

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31 Jul

The single dome you imagine protecting a city does not exist

הילה מורןרפאל

In short: air defense is not a single dome that swats everything from the sky. It is a stack of separate layers, each tuned to a different range and threat, passing targets down the chain until one of them gets a clean shot. Ask most people how a country stops incoming rockets and drones, and they picture one invisible bubble that catches anything crossing the border. That mental image is wrong. Real air defense is built as a relay. A long-range radar spots a threat hundreds of kilometers out, a command system decides which weapon owns that track, and the…

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