Report: Muslim Brotherhood allegedly helped Hamas develop drones

[bemildred]

Egyptian prosecutors are investigating a group of Muslim Brotherhood members alleged to have provided Hamas operatives with equipment and technology for purposes of developing unmanned aerial vehicles, the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram is reporting in Saturday editions.

Specifically, the newspaper is reporting that authorities have focused their inquiry on the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood cell, a professor who teaches at Al Azhar University, a well-known Islamic institution.

In addition, investigators also suspect an additional Brotherhood member who was thought to be responsible for the group's activities along Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip last January, when Hamas breached the fence separating the Strip with Sinai. The goal of the initiative was to manufacture aerial drones which would then be fitted with explosives that would be detonated by remote control, Al Ahram, a paper long identified with Egyptian officialdom, reported Saturday.

The group of suspects is also reported to include members of the Hamas military wing, the Az a-Din al Qassam Brigades.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978062.html

[msmcghee]

1. This could become a very dangerous development.

Hamas seems to have a goal of making it impossible for Israel to defend itself from attack without killing large numbers of Palestinain civilians. Anyone can see that from Israel's perspective, destroying Hamas and re-establishing a military occupation of Gaza will eventually be necessary. Also, that doing this in the near future will be less costly in terms of both Israeli and Palestinain civilian lives - than waiting for weapons like these to come on line.

[msmcghee]

2. Perhaps, the only realistic outcome for the peace talks with Abbas . .

. . is that Gaza becomes the new occupied territory and the WB becomes the new Palestinain state - with annexation of Gaza into the new Palestinian state with connecting highways and such at some future date - if Gazan's can ever rid themselves of extremists - which would require first, that they want to do so.

Perhaps, Israel sees this as the only practical way to get there.

[The Magistrate]

3. Interesting, Sir

Ties between the two groups are, of course, no surprise at all: to mix metaphors a bit, they come off the same root and twine like vines in their growth.

The explosive drone is a pretty problematic weapon, particularly for amateurs without an industrial aviation infrastructure. The larger one is, the easier it is to detect and down; the smaller one is, the less effect can its warhead achieve.

[bemildred]

4. Yes Sir, it seems to come up from time to time too.

I hadn't realized RC planes were that hard to do, but I suppose one big enough to carry much payload would be a different matter. Lord knows the UAVs they are hunting terrorists with now cost a bundle. And it's hard for me to see these low-tech things becoming much more than an annoyance, or I would have expected to see more of that sort of thing in action by now. The things that work like car-bombs and suicide bombs, we see plenty of. There were similar worries before the Iraq invasion in '03, and it appears to have been all talk.

[The Magistrate]

5. Big Enough Ones Certainly Are, Sir

You may be aware of my habit of building small models of old aircraft, and while the crafts are very different, this has brought me into some contact with the building of larger scale flying models, remotely controlled, with wings-spans of up to six or eight feet in some instances. The adjustment of control surfaces to actually do what needs doing is apparently quite an art, and much experience, experiment, and wreckage seems to lies behind successes of which people are justly proud. There is very little power to spare over the weight of the object, so even in these sizeable things payload is problematic.

Building a thing that could take a decent pay-load is essentially building an airplane about the size of an old Piper Cub or some such. Even today, this is not something that can be done by simply plugging in engineering formulae. Tests, whether in a wind tunnel or prototype flight, are still required to assess stability and controlability, and it is rare that something comes straight off the drawing board without requiring some signifigant modification to address oddities cropping up in these areas.

Remote control presents other strictly military problems. If achieved by radio, you are essentially announcing the location of your controller throughout the flight, and probably the location of your aircraft as well. Control by pre-set directions avoid this, but has no hope of accuracy without much field trial and perfect information on winds and atmospheric densities. My guess is that things like gyro-stabilization or video nap-reading is probably beyond what could be put together in clandestine workshops.

"We've got a perfect record in aviation. We haven't left one plane up in the air yet."

[bemildred]

6. Thank you, Sir, that's very interesting.

It sort of coincides with my intuition, but my intuition is often wrong, so it's good to have something else to back it up.

[msmcghee]

7. I'd be very surprised if building such aircraft is not well . .

. . within the capabilities of states such as Iran. Iran is already known to be a supplier of weapons to Gaza as well as providing training for many militants in the higher arts of killing. Their rulers also seem to be highly motivated to destroy Jews. It would be very expensive and difficult for Israel to defend against even a small RPV operation.

An obvious variation would be Qassam type rockets with radio controlled fins and a TV camera to provide some guidance in to a target. Hamas has already shown that Israel has no effective defense against small rockets like that. TV cameras and radio control gear are already small, inexpensive and easy to smuggle through tunnels in large quantities. Such rockets, the designs developed in Iran, would be easily assembled in Gaza from smuggled components. If the radio control signals are sent from densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza there's little Israel could or would do before the rocket impacted the target.

I'm just saying that Hamas is quite dedicated and has very capable mentors in Iran. With many such possibilities for improving the kill-rate of Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, I don't see how the re-occupation of Gaza will be avoided. But, perhaps Israel is letting the talks with Abbas play out in hopes that some final deal is good enough that Hamas wants to be part of it before such weapons come on line. But, I really doubt that will happen.

[The Magistrate]

8. States Certainly Can Build Them, Ma'am

But that does not seem to be what the article was referencing.

To my knowledge, anyway, no military has bothered packing guidance into a munition the size of a Quassam, which suggests that even in the present state of electronic miniaturization, it is not a feasible effort.