Three years after its introduction, the Israeli Python 5 air-to-air missile finally got its first combat kill. This happened on August 7th, when an Israeli F-16 was sent to shoot down a Hizbollah UAV off the coast. The target was an Iranian Ababil. This is a 183 pound UAV with a ten foot wing span, a payload of about 80 pounds, a cruising speed of 290 kilometers an hour and an endurance of 90 minutes. Using GPS guidance, it could deliver about 60 pounds of explosives to a prominent Israeli government building in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The Ababil normally carries a variety of day and night still and video cameras. Hizbollah is now using the Ababil as a cruise missile...
Friday, September 08, 2006
Israeli missile kills Iranian UAV
Strategy Page
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3 comments:
Here's some information on that UAV. It looks a lot like some of the early rocket tests that the United States did. Looks like the Islamic nutjobs are finally starting to be able to build their own technology. Maybe in another fifty years, they'll finally be able to build their own stealth fighters...
Who am I kidding? That assumes that they have any money after the next decade or two when we end our automotive dependency on oil :)
Yea, but they had to use our aeronautics research to do it ;->
The NACA 0012 and 4412 date back well over 50 years...
And the Wankel engine is a german design ;->
I predict a headline in the Times. �Iran graciously provides free target drone for Israeli missile test� only because their normal headline �Israel shoots down innocent Iranian cruise missile, women and children hardest hit� would be hard to swallow, even for the Times typical readers.
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