The Israeli defense minister threatened to destroy Syrian air defenses after they shot at Israeli warplanes, which violated Syrian airspace and bombed targets on Syrian soil.
“Next time, if the Syrian aerial defense apparatus acts against our planes, we will destroy it,” Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli Public Radio on Sunday. “We won't hesitate. Israel's security is above everything else; there will be no compromise.”
He was referring to the Friday morning raid of the Israeli Air Force, the latest of several reported over the past few years, in which Israel claimed it targeted weapons bound for the Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah. Israel says it has to protect itself from advanced weapons which the militants try to obtain from the Syrian government.
Syria shot surface-to-air S-200 missiles at the Israeli planes as they were flying back from the night mission. Damascus claims it shot down one of the planes, while Israel denies it.
The Israeli media said one of the Syrian missiles was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow air defense system. It was the first time Israel officials have confirmed combat use of the advanced anti-missiles, which are originally meant to intercept heavy long-range ballistic missiles.
According to a Rotter citizen reporter with the handle Abu Ali, who specializes in translating Arab media, Syrian opposition sources have reported that the weapons truck the Israeli Air Force attacked in the Palmyra area, in central Syria, about 150 miles northeast of Damascus, had arrived by land from Iraq. Unlike in previous IAF attacks, the convoy was not carrying Syrian weapons to the Hezbollah, but Iranian weapons, going directly to the terror group in Lebanon.
This may mean that the contents of the attacked trucks were “tie breaking weapons” which would give Hezbollah the upper hand in a future encounter with Israel.
According to Abu Ali, Iran has been making serious efforts to forge a shiite territorial contiguity from its border all the way to Lebanon. To date Iran has succeeded in securing one road that goes through the Syrian desert and then continues to the Lebanese border through Shiite population centers. There is a second road, further south than the first, which is interrupted by rebel-controlled territories.
According to the Syrian opposition sources, the trucks arriving in Palmyra from Iraq are accompanied by Iranian military forces.
Abu Ali also reports that the missiles that were shot at the IAF attack aircraft were the S-200 type, operated by the Syrian army. There are S-300 and S-400 batteries on Syrian soil, and the fact that those newer, more advanced missiles were not used suggests that they are operated strictly by the Russian contingency there, which is yet to turn them over to the Assad regime.
One day after Rex Tillerson warned that the US is contemplating a pre-emptive military attack on North Korea, the isolated nation announced it has conducted a ground test of a new type of high-thrust rocket engine that leader Kim Jong Un is calling a "revolutionary breakthrough" for the country's space program, the North's state media said Sunday. Kim attended Saturday's test at the Sohae launch site, according to the Korean Central News Agency, which said the test was intended to confirm the "new type" of engine's thrust power and gauge the reliability of its control system and structural safety.
Kim called the test "a great event of historic significance" for the country's indigenous rocket industry, the KCNA report said. He also said the "whole world will soon witness what eventful significance the great victory won today carries" and claimed the test marks what will be known as the "March 18 revolution" in the development of the country's rocket industry. The report indicated that the engine is to be used for North Korea's space and satellite-launching program.
The claim of a successful test of the high-thrust rocket engine would put North Korea a step closer to being able to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, as Mr. Kim said the country would do this year in his new-year address, the WSJ reported.
According to a high-level Russian source with ties to the military (named in the podcast below), Russia not only possesses a devastating secret weapon against the United States; they’ve already apparently put it in place off the East Coast shoreline.
The existence of this secret weapon — which could unleash a massive radioactive tidal wave that devastates cities along the East Coast — has been covered by the BBC in this article:
The Kremlin says secret plans for a Russian long-range nuclear torpedo – called “Status-6” – should not have appeared on Russian TV news. The leak happened during a report on state-run Channel One about President Vladimir Putin meeting military chiefs in the city of Sochi.
One general was seen studying a diagram of the “devastating” torpedo system. Launched by a submarine, it would create “wide areas of radioactive contamination”, the document says.
The “oceanic multi-purpose Status-6 system” is designed to “destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time”, the document says.
The weapon is known as a “nuclear mole,” and it’s an underwater drone that carries a nuclear warhead, then burrows into the seabed floor off the coast of the target country. Once buried into the sea floor, these nuclear weapons can be remotely detonated to cause a massive tidal wave that would wipe out coastal cities in minutes.
I have estimated that a series of these weapons could be detonated in a timed sequence that multiplies the amplitude of the tidal wave, causing a much larger and more devastating wave than any single weapon by itself.
In addition to the physical destruction that could result from such a weapon, the tidal wave would contain radioactive sea water, making it a “dirty bomb” in addition to the physical destruction. The “dirty bomb” aspect of such a weapon would deposit deadly concentrations of radioactive isotopes across the affected cities, leaving behind a toxic legacy of radioactive elements such as iodine-131, cesium-137 and various isotopes of uranium and plutonium, both of which have far longer half lives than iodine (approx. 7 days) and cesium (approx. 29 years).
Washington D.C., New York City, Philadelphia and Boston are all highly vulnerable to this weapon system, as they sit very close to the U.S. coastline and are well within reach of nuclear-initiated radioactive tidal waves.
1 comment:
Gary - I don't know, the thought hadn't occurred to me - LOL on the pic , yea, same here :)
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