[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: In all respect to Israel's budget situation - is
it really wise to make progress in such a critical program subject to
whether Uncle Sam is willing to chip in some money or not?]

Israel Seeks Missile-Sensing UAV
Wants U.S. Support for Bluebird Infrared Decoy Sensor
By DEFENSE NEWS STAFF Published: 3 November 2008
www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3800042

Israel plans to develop a high-flying, long-endurance unmanned infrared
sensor to assist in those white-knuckled minutes when it may be forced to
spot incoming nuclear warheads amid dozens of decoys sent to confound
national missile defenses.

A prototype of the long-range, high-resolution target-discrimination sensor
has already been tested aboard a business jet under a closely held
Israeli-German program called Bluebird. Officials from the Israeli and
German ministries of defense acknowledged the existence of the nearly
five-year-old program, but said details about the demonstrator remain
classified.

"This program is classified, and I cannot discuss it," said Lutz Wagner of
the German Ministry of Defense's armament division.

But with the escalating Iranian nuclear threat and the possibility that
Tehran will one day equip ballistic missiles with decoys and maneuvering
warheads, Israel is seeking U.S. help in moving the technology from
demonstration to deployment.

"The Israelis want an additional sensor in the air, and since Bluebird is
only a demonstrator, they want to replace it with an operational sensor on a
UAV," a Pentagon source said.

According to U.S. and international government sources, Israel has proposed
integrating the unmanned target discriminator into its future national
missile defense network. Under the proposed Israeli program, known in
Washington as Airborne Early Warning Sensor (ABEWS), the Bluebird follow-on
would be part of Israel's planned Arrow-3 Upper Tier, providing critical
data to decision-makers as they determine how many and what kind of
interceptors to launch against incoming missiles.

In a presentation to international industry experts at a missile defense
conference in Prague last July, an Israeli MoD representative displayed a
viewgraph that illustrated the concept. In his slide, labeled "Airborne
[Electro-Optical] Sensor," Guy Aviram of the Israel Missile Defense
Organization's technical division showed a high-altitude UAV resembling the
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) Heron-1 distributing information via
satellite to elements of Israel's envisioned network.

Israel's Rafael and Germany's Diehl BGT Defence developed the IR Bluebird
prototype under the bilateral program. Government and industry sources said
Rafael will provide the sensor for an IAI-produced UAV under the follow-on
initiative.

In a mid-October interview, Pentagon sources said the U.S. Missile Defense
Agency (MDA) is reviewing Israeli requests to include the follow-on to
Bluebird in the jointly funded Israeli Upper Tier program. According to the
sources, $50 million has been appropriated for the Israeli Upper Tier
program in 2008 and 2009, and Israel's MoD may be able to use a portion of
those funds for Bluebird follow-on activities.

"The Israelis want another airborne sensor," a Pentagon official said. "We
have not yet said yes or no. We're reviewing their request."

Discriminating between warheads and sophisticated decoys is "if not the most
challenging, one of the most challenging problems that missile defense
people are working," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.

The task proved too much for the Pentagon's nascent Space-Based Infrared
System Low program, he said.

Moreover, the problem is getting harder. The first decoys, little more than
mylar balloons to be deployed after the missile left the atmosphere, were
cooler than warheads and returned a different radar signature. But putting
the warheads inside balloons makes weapons and decoys look similar on radar.
Adding heaters reduces the temperature difference. Adding buzzers makes
decoy balloons vibrate like those surrounding heavier warheads.

For the attacking force, "the trick is to either make all the balloons look
exactly the same or make each of them look different," Pike said. For the
defenders, "the trick is to hit all the balloons, which is the idea behind
miniature kill vehicles. If you can't discriminate them, then kill them all
with a kill vehicle small enough that one interceptor can carry a lot of
them."

The tracking problem is difficult but solveable, said Pike. He pointed to
the U.S. Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability program, which overcame
initial bugs and now allows Aegis cruisers to coordinate their radar tracks
into an integrated picture of incoming missiles.

Poor Man's SBIRS

If implemented, the Israeli program will mark the first use of an unmanned
platform for the nuclear warhead hunting/decoy discrimination mission, U.S.
and international experts said.

"There's nothing comparable. Airborne versions have been used as research
tools, but nothing has ever been integrated into an active national defense
sensor network ... Certainly, there's never been anything like this mounted
on a UAV," an international industry consultant said.

The U.S. military experimented with putting infrared sensors on a Boeing
767, an effort called the Airborne Optical Adjunct. It was quietly killed in
the 1990s as the Pentagon sought to move all its missile defense sensors to
space.

A European defense expert likened the Israeli-envisioned unmanned Bluebird
system to "a poor man's SBIRS," referring to the planned U.S. Space Based
Infrared System, which is designed in part to discriminate between ballistic
missile warheads and other objects, such as decoy countermeasures and
debris.

He speculated that Israel would mount the large IR sensor on Israel's newest
and larger Heron-2 UAV rather than Heron-1, as depicted in Aviram's
presentation. "It's bigger and can remain airborne a lot longer than
anything else they've got," the European expert said of Heron-2, also known
here as Eitan.

According to IAI and Israel Air Force data, Eitan weighs more than 4.5 tons,
has a wingspan akin to a Boeing 737, and can carry up to a ton of
specialized sensors in its bulbous forward section, as well as in its
principal payload bay and on each of its twin tail booms.

An Israeli program official contacted in late October refused to discuss
details of the Bluebird follow-on program. However, he said a final decision
is pending.
IAI and Rafael declined all discussion on Bluebird and follow-on efforts.
MoD spokesman Shlomo Dror was unable to comment by press time.
----
Barbara Opall-Rome contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Vago Muradian
and Gayle S. Putrich from Washington.