One of the things Israel has going for it is an incredibly adept arms industry that specializes in military high tech. The US has taken advantage of that more than once in the past.
One place where Israel shines is in unmanned drones and its export models were the undisputed star of the recent Paris arms exhibition.
The Russian military has been drooling over Israel's drones for quite some time now, and has been negotiating to buy them, interesting in itself since Russia never buys foreign arms systems. The deal appears to have finally gone through, but with an interesting trade off involved: the Russians have agreed to put a freeze on their prospective sale of S-300 Pantsyr anti-missile defense systems to Iran.
This is one more sign that the Israelis realize that they're going to have to deal with Iran's nukes themselves...and soon.
What the Russians have in mind is to re-engineer the Israeli technology to create their own drones. However, there are a number of safeguards the Israelis can implement to neutralize the impact of this, and I'm sure they'll take reasonable precautions.
regardless of any re-engineering or other precautions, this will ultimately come back to bite the USA.
ReplyDeletenot only the electronics or the code.
the optics.
this can be laid at both 43/44 doorsteps as their failure to act, and shortsightedness will eventually cost us. one from financial entanglements and the other ideological entanglements.
speaking as a gentile, i can only say g-d bless.
This is certainly an interesting idea, however, it is fraught with risks. Two big risks I can think of off hand are: 1.) Russia clearly wants to reverse engineer this. While Israel may be able to take precautions to prevent this, they should be very careful. The Russians are the most clever and cunning of the major world powers. If the source codes have been shared with the Americans or anyone within Western Europe, the Russians will likely have access to this, as Russia has operatives buried deeply in all levels of the American and Western European governmens. As such, Israel needs to ensure no one in the West other than themselves have access to the source codes or any other means to reverse engineer these unmanned drones, 2.)In the past, Russia has shown an uncanny ability to manipulate the world media to support its interests. Part of the way this manifests itself is the world media does not subject Russia to very much scrutiny. This leaves them free to do whatever they want to do. In contrast, Israel faces extreme scrutiny by the world media. This has the potential to lead to a problem. Specifically how do we ensure Russia complies with any agreement they make? With the intense scrutiny that Israel faces by the world media they will be forced to comply with the agreement whether they wish to or not. Russia has shown itself to be treacherous in the past. Unless there is some way to ensure Russian compliance with the agreement I would be against the agreement. Nevertheless if the two main issues above can be addressed the proposed agreement does hold promise for Israel.
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