Israel’s satellite technology is about to get even better.
In a unique flight scheduled for liftoff from India Sept. 17-20, Israel’s first “Polaris/TecSat†military imaging radar satellite is to be launched along with India’s first military recon spacecraft. They will be fired into an approximately 600-km. (372-mi.) polar orbit atop the same powerful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
The mission, from India’s launch site on an island in the Bay of Bengal, will also inaugurate major military space cooperation between India and Israel.
If successful, the Israeli space-based radar will put Israel among the small list of nations with imaging radar reconnaissance satellites able to distinguish camouflaged vehicles from rocky terrain, for example, and to see at night and through clouds and foliage.
The launch of Polaris 1 will also provide Israel with a new capability that will be focused heavily on Iran, including obtaining data for a potential Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Aviation geeks will enjoy reading the full story, but for the rest of us, the interesting stuff is in this post.
Two more stories to read, though: First, Bret Stephens in the WSJ discusses the North Korea angle of the Syria raid.
As for the North Korean theory, evidence for it starts with Pyongyang. The raid, said one North Korean foreign ministry official quoted by China’s Xinhua news agency, was “little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security.” But who asked him, anyway? In August, the North Korean trade minister signed an agreement with Syria on “cooperation in trade and science and technology.” Last week, Andrew Semmel, the acting counterproliferation chief at the State Department, confirmed that North Korean technicians of some kind were known to be in Syria, and that Syria was “on the U.S. nuclear watch list.” And then there is yesterday’s curious news that North Korea has abruptly suspended its participation in the six-party talks, for reasons undeclared.
That still leaves the question of just what kind of transfers could have taken place. There has been some speculation regarding a Syrian plant in the city of Homs, built 20 years ago to extract uranium from phosphate (of which Syria has an ample supply). Yet Homs is 200 miles west of Dayr az Zawr, the city on the Euphrates reportedly closest to the site of the attack. More to the point, uranium extraction from phosphates is a commonplace activity (without it, phosphate is hazardous as fertilizer) and there is a vast gulf separating this kind of extraction from the enrichment process needed to turn uranium into something genuinely threatening.
Herb Keinon in the JPost (Stephen’s old paper) raises an interesting point:
First of all, if indeed the alleged IAF sortie over Syria had to do with a nuclear shipment from Pyongyang, then Israel’s stock has to go up because it will be seen in a few key capitals as the force that will not allow nuclear proliferation in the region.
It is interesting to note, by the way, the resounding lack of condemnation – either in Europe or even in the Arab world – to Israel’s alleged attack.
There is absolutely no condemnation of the attack from anyone but Syria, Iran, and North Korea. No EU representative is shaking his fingers at Israel and demanding an investigation. The UN is silent. The OIC, ditto. Syria’s Arab neighbors have nothing to say. The usual anti-Israel voices are utterly—and mysteriously—silent.
This is not the way they would be acting if Israel had, say, really destroyed a Hezbollah arms dump. The conventional wisdom would have been on the order of, “Well, they might have been weapons destined for Lebanon, but Israel had no proof, and anyway, that’s what the UN is for and Israel should have gone through channels.
Instead, we have nothing. A little bit of bluster from Syria, and nothing else. As they say: The silence is deafening.
Apparently, the world doesn’t care if Israel bombs things that might hurt someone besides Israel, like a Syrian nuke site. It’s only when Israel defends Israel that the world has a problem. Remember this the next time Israel heads into Gaza to take out Hamas rocketeers. Or don’t bother. I’m sure I’ll bring it up.
I think NK might have shipped some actual nuclear warheads to Syria, and been in the process of helping fit them onto some extra Scuds Saddam bequeathed to Bashir before he had to run for the hills.
Assuming the bombing did destroy nuclear materials, trace radioactive materials should be present in the atmosphere, and that would tell investigative scientists a great deal, as each reactor has readily a identifiable ‘signature’.
Ask the CIA in a month. They’ll be able to tell you the names of the college professors who taught the nuclear technicians who brewed it.