Clueless: Israeli military fought hard to block missile-location system
Geostrategy-Direct, www.geostrategy-direct.com, January 31, 2007

TEL AVIV - Israel's military, failing to envision massive Hizbullah rocket
salvos, waged a four-year battle against the development of a
missile-location system widely used in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Israeli military sources and officers said the Intelligence Corps opposed a
project to develop a system that would mark the landing of enemy rockets and
missiles. The corps and the air force rejected such a system, citing
Israel's deterrence capabilities against Hizbullah and the Palestinian
Authority.

"If they had listened to us from the start the conduct of the war would have
been better," said one of the developers, identified only as "Shin."

In the end, Shin and "Yud," two members of the Intelligence Corps, spent
four years independently developing the missile-location system, dubbed
Ayala. Officers alarmed by Hizbullah?s rocket buildup in Lebanon near the
Israeli border unofficially aided the project.

On Dec. 25, the two officers were honored in a military ceremony headed by
Maj. Gen. Eyal Ben Reuven, chief of staff of the Ground Forces Command. Ben
Reuven was the leading supporter of Ayala in face of opposition from
officers who cited inadequate security and interoperability.

"This was an exceptional initiative that comprised the main basis of
information on all of the launches toward Israeli territory during the
second war in Lebanon," Ben Reuven said.

The initiative to develop Ayala came from Shin, then a junior intelligence
officer who served in Northern Command. Like Ben Reuven, Shin concluded that
the next war would include massive rocket salvos by Hizbullah, an assessment
that was not shared by most of the Intelligence Corps or General Staff.

Ayala, the first version of which was developed in 2002, was designed to
provide commanders with real-time pictures of rocket and missile landings in
Israel. The system, meant to be linked to a range of information sources,
would enable the military to immediately retaliate against enemy missile and
rocket fire.

In an interview with the Israeli independent weekly Mekor Rishon, Ben Reuven
recalled that he immediately endorsed Ayala.
But the system was opposed by the computer unit of the Intelligence Corps,
which insisted that the system was unnecessary, and later argued that Ayala
would harm existing networks.

Under Ben Reuven's urging, the military's Research and Development
Department became involved and an officer who had developed a similar system
joined the two designers. Quietly, the team introduced Ayala to units,
including Northern Command and the General Staff.

Combat and other units requested Ayala in July 2006 when Hizbullah began
firing rocket salvos into Israel. Shin said the system required several
upgrades to enable the tracking of the hundreds of rocket landings per day.

Shin said the system was installed in 500 military positions. Still, he
said, the air force, ordered to destroy Hizbullah rocket sites, refused to
provide data required by Ayala.

"Even in a real life-and-death situation, people pulled rank," Shin
recalled.

At one point, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, a former air force
commander, ordered Ayala for his office. Yud said he did not know whether
Halutz ever operated the system. Yud said Halutz's chief of staff rejected
the designer's offer to instruct the military commander.

"The chief of staff is sufficiently intelligent to read the operating
instructions," Yud recalled Halutz's aide as saying.