ROBOTS DROIDS and DRONES

DRONE WARS.

Iran launched and unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel early Sunday (April 14, 2024).

The Israeli military said that “99 percent” of the more than 300 projectiles fired at Israel by Iran were intercepted, CNN reported.

Around 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles were launched at Israel by Iran, the vast majority intercepted by the Israeli Air Force and Israeli “partners,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.

Iran had vowed repeatedly that it would respond to an apparent Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus on April 1 that killed two generals, the Associated Press noted. Sunday’s assault allowed Iran to show to its citizens that it won’t stand by when its assets are attacked and that it was serious when it threatened revenge.

However, analysts said the attack was also carefully choreographed — giving Israel and its allies time to prepare, and providing the Israeli government a possible off-ramp amid fears of a widening war, the Washington Post reported.

Front view of a Shahed-136 drone at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force exhibition in 2023. (photo by the Tasnim News Agency website via wikipedia)

Sunday’s attack was the first time Iran had ever launched a military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to the AP.

Iran has a vast arsenal of drones and missiles. Tehran’s choice of the Shahed-136 drones both give Israel and its allies hours to shoot down the bomb-carrying drones.

In a statement issued by the White House, President Biden said “Iran—and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria and Iraq—launched an unprecedented air attack against military facilities in Israel. I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms.

“At my direction, to support the defense of Israel,” Biden added “the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week. Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our service members, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”