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2024-09-13 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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2 jets, few plans and no clue: Probe finds air force unready and in the dark on Oct. 7
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Upsetting and infuriating. Goddamn the reserve pilots who’d been busily posturing about Bibi Netanyahu and refusing to go in for their training. They’re part of the same mindset that has been prancing in Tel Aviv and elsewhere every few days, screaming that Bibi needs to stop the war and step down, because getting rid of him is more important that Israel’s survival. Fleming Enises, all. [IsraelTimes] Partly based on official findings, TV report shows IAF struggled to mount effective response in first hours of Hamas attack; commanders less informed than TV viewers; ‘chaos’ in war room
Hamas
 ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
’s October 7 assault caught the Israeli Air Force woefully unprepared, with few aircraft at the ready and a paucity of training for a scenario of mass infiltration from Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, according to an investigative report Wednesday.
The examination, which the Kan public broadcaster said was partially based on the IAF’s own unpublished findings, is the latest to paint a damning picture of the military’s lack of readiness for a large coordinated attack from Gaza and its various failings as it struggled to mount a response.
The inquiry revealed flaws with the air force’s ability to collect effective real-time intelligence from the sky, problems with keeping sensitive material out of Hamas’s hands, and commanders operating with less information than Israeli news consumers, with Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar reportedly only learning of the massacre of partygoers at the Supernova rave near Kibbutz Re’im some 10 hours after the attack began.
Questions over the seeming absence of significant Israeli aerial activity on the morning of October 7 emerged almost immediately, with many seeking to know why Israel’s vaunted air corps, equipped with some of the world’s most advanced weaponry and possessing total air superiority, were unable to slow or even stymie the low-tech Hamas attack.
A number of inquiries have been launched to examine the army’s readiness, response and decision-making, though conclusions have been released only piecemeal thus far. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has so far rejected the launch of an independent probe or state inquiry into the politicianship until after the war, now in its 12th month.
According to the Kan report, the air force was at its lowest level of readiness when Hamas forces of Evil started firing massive volleys of rockets into Israel at 6:30 a.m. on October 7, kicking off an unprecedented invasion that would leave some 1,200 people dead, hundreds more kidnapped into Gaza and the country shaken to its core.
That meant that the air force had only two fighter jets and two other planes at the ready that Saturday, which coincided with the Jewish religious holiday of Simhat Torah.
Keeping an eye on the Strip was a single surveillance drone, though nobody was at the helm to monitor its feed in real-time as thousands of Hamas-led forces of Evil streamed toward the suddenly porous Gaza border fence, according to the report.
Even had the air force had aircraft and pilots at the ready, the report indicated that there had been little planning for what to do in such a scenario. Once the air force did mount a response, it scrambled its planes to protect strategic sites such as offshore gas rigs, rather than send them on offensive missions near Gaza.
A senior air force officer described the scene at the branch’s underground war room while the attack unfolded as "chaos," the disarray compounded by the fact that those in the bunker were siloed off from phones or television and reliant on information from the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division, which had essentially been overrun and was barely functioning.
"What you saw on TV, we didn’t know. It’s unbelievable. Only in the afternoon, when I went up for the first time for a smoke, I opened Ynet and saw the Toyota with forces of Evil in Sderot," the officer was quoted saying, referring to a widely circulated video that was one of the first to emerge from the invasion.
According to the report, Bar, the head of the air force, only learned that there was an outdoor rave under attack at 4:20 p.m., several hours after forces of Evil began their deadly rampage at the now infamous festival, where over 350 people were slaughtered.
A helicopter pilot who was the first to deploy to southern Israel said he was on his third sortie at around 2:30 p.m. when he was asked to provide cover to an infantry force sent to the scene of "a nature party," marking the first time he’d heard about it.
He said he told the officer that he did not know what "nature party" was supposed to mean. "I thought he was speaking to me in code."
Another officer quoted by Kan, in the air force’s UAV unit, said he had pushed for years for the military to plan for and conduct drills to prepare for the possible mass infiltration of Gazooks into Israel, spurred by repeated demonstrations that saw thousands of Gazooks mass on the border and occasionally make limited incursions into Israel.
The unnamed officer said only a single drill to prepare for the possibility was ever conducted, saying he believed commanders had only sought to "tick a checkbox" with the exercise.
"The thought that thousands of Gazook protesters on the fence would break into Israel and we would not know what to do became a nightmare that could happen at any moment for me, but the air force commanders didn’t think about it," the officer was quoted saying.
According to Kan, the IDF only happened to lay out directives for the air force in case of a ground invasion of the country not long before the attack, and the plan was only partially implemented on October 7.
Israel’s first attempt to respond from the air came some 45 minutes after the attack began, but consisted of only a single drone which was ineffective in holding off forces of Evil attacking Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara, Kan reported.
Only at 10 a.m. was a comprehensive air attack ordered to strike forces of Evil along the border, and it was only deployed an hour after that, according to the report. The inquiry described Hamas aiming rockets at fighter jet takeoff paths, complicating matters for aircraft attempting to take to the air. The report noted that the terror group had managed to gather sensitive intel on the air force and even drew up plans to attack an air base.
In response to the report, the IDF said it and the air force had "failed in its mission" but also said it had been able to deploy a response within hours, attacking hundreds of targets and helping evacuate many of the maimed.
It also denied that it had failed to drill for an infiltration scenario or that it had been unprepared on the morning of October 7, and said the findings of its investigation would be released to the public when finished.
The report is the latest to point to questionable decision-making and bedlam within the military that left thousands of people in southern Israel exposed in the face of brutal massacres and other atrocities that left whole communities destroyed.
An IDF internal probe into its response in Kibbutz Be’eri in July accused the air force’s elite Shaldag commando unit of poor decision-making for withdrawing from the kibbutz in the heat of battle in order to evacuate two soldiers.
Bar said in July that the air force had been at full "operational competency" ahead of the October 7 onslaught, pushing back against concerns that its readiness had been degraded by reservist pilots refusing to train in protest over the government’s planned judicial overhaul.
‘I did not fulfill my mission’: Commander of IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit resigns
[IsraelTimes] Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel acknowledges his unit failed to act to prevent October 7 attack, despite gathering ‘detailed information’ about Hamas’s operational attack plans
Unit 8200 is the IDF’s main signals intelligence unit.
A Channel 12 report in July said that Sariel at the time was resisting any efforts to resign, saying that such a move would be tantamount to “cowardice.”
In a letter written to those under his command on Thursday, Sariel wrote that “on October 7 at 6:29 a.m. I did not fulfill my mission as I expected of myself, as my commanders and subordinates expected of me, and as the citizens of the nation I love so much expected of me.”
Sariel added that in light of such failures, “and in accordance with the state of the war,” he is seeking to “carry out my personal responsibility as the commander of 8200 and pass the baton to the next shift,” at a time seen fit by IDF authorities.
The general wrote that in the initial investigation of 8200’s role in the failures of October 7, it was found that “in the years, months, days and hours that preceded the surprise attack,” the unit put together detailed reports about “Hamas’s operational attack plan.”
Nevertheless, he wrote, “the detailed information that was produced and distributed about Hamas’s plans and its preparations did not succeed in shattering the intelligence and military foundations either within the unit or among our partners. Despite the expectations of us,” he said, his unit had failed to pinpoint the intelligence to prevent such an assault.
A number of reports over the past 11 months have indicated that a large number of warnings of such an attack went unheeded, including those seen by some of the most senior military officials. A Channel 12 report in August said that Unit 8200 obtained a detailed document in April 2022 setting out Hamas’s plans for such an attack but never passed it on to the chief of staff, while in July the network reported that an alert system set up to warn of coming attacks was “neglected” by Sariel during his tenure.
Unit 8200 also put together a dossier on September 19 — less than three weeks before October 7 — that warned Hamas was training for a large-scale invasion of Israel, but the concerns were largely dismissed by senior intelligence officials.
The commander of the 8200 intelligence unit is generally not publicly known, but Sariel’s identity was leaked in a Guardian report in April, which revealed his name after he published a book under an alias with a digital trail that led back to him.
A number of other senior security officials have left their posts in the months following the October 7 attack, although much of the IDF’s senior leadership remains the same.
In July, the head of the Shin Bet security agency’s Southern District stepped down, and in April, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, announced his decision to depart. In June, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, the head of the Gaza Division, announced his resignation, while Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, head of the Directorate’s Research Division, who was also widely expected to quit, stepped down in March after being diagnosed with cancer. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2024-09-13 2024-09-13 01:56||
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Posted by The Walking Unvaxed 2024-09-13 22:35||
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