Media: Russian drones and S-300 missile systems no threat to Israel
Russia is actively utilizing the progress made by Israel for its own drone production program, often by borrowing technologies, reports Svobodnaya Pressa.
Last year there was an incident where Israel’s aerial defense shot down a Russian-made drone over the Golan Heights. An analysis of the fragments showed that the drone was completely identical to a model used by the Israeli Air Force. “The only difference was that our apparatus had inscriptions in Cyrillic,” the Russian news outlet observes.
Then the author mentions the failures during the war with Georgia and the Russian government’s subsequent decision to start collaborating with Israel in the area of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) production. In 2010, Russia spent $400 million buying technology from one of Israel’s leading drone producers, Israel Aerospace Industries.
“In the end, after two years the Russian army obtained the Forpost. One could say that it was the first effective Russian UAV, if it weren’t an exact copy of the Israeli Searcher II. Moreover, even all of the components were imported from the Jewish state,” the author writes, inferring that this poses a threat to Russia.
“And this is bad, if you take into account the fact that in the Syrian airspace between Russia and Israel there are many unresolved issues. The IDF regularly flies sorties and attacks our allies… And Iran, which is constantly losing its facilities, is already starting to look askance at the Kremlin. All of this impedes Moscow, and it is in the interests of Russia’s leaders to use all available resources to restrict the Israeli Air Force in the sky over Syria. It is clear that Israeli technologies won’t help here. The problem is that the specialists from Israel Aerospace Industries have studied the Forposts inside and out,” the article remarks.
The article concludes that, if necessary, “Israel could easily disable the Russian drones and bypass the S-300”.