Residents of Tel Aviv and surrounding towns witnessed loud,
low-flying maneuvers by Israel Air Force jets on Saturday morning when the
planes scrambled to intercept what was initially believed to be an intrusion by
enemy aircraft into Israel’s airspace.
The intruder, which turned out to be a flock of birds, was
detected inside Israeli airspace shortly before 10 a.m. The surprise intrusion
triggered alarms in Israel’s aerial detection systems, leading the Air Force to
scramble fighters to intercept.
The slow-moving, weak radar signal given off by the birds
led to concern among defense officials that the object might be a small
unmanned drone.
The IDF has intercepted such drones twice in the past 12
months, including in October 2012 and last April, when the IDF shot down a
drone five miles off the coast of Haifa that the army said was collecting
intelligence for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.
The fighters flew low over the towns of “Gush Dan” (the Dan
Bloc), the Hebrew term for the Tel Aviv conurbation, leading to alarm and
speculation among residents. The IDF rarely conducts training exercises on the
Sabbath, so a Saturday deployment is usually thought to be a sign of imminent
military action.
The alert lasted only a few minutes. Once the pilots
verified that the unidentified flying object was a tight-knit flock of birds,
the Air Force announced a stand-down and the pilots were ordered back to base.
No comments:
Post a Comment