Israel Trains To Live With SCUD

[ErnstBlofeld]

The Strategy Page:

The Israeli Air Force has increased its training of air base personnel to keep bases operating after attacks by ballistic missiles. These warheads will either be filled with high explosives, cluster bombs or chemical weapons. Israelis know what kind of damage this stuff can do, and set up training programs that assume hits in different areas during each training exercise. The air base personnel then go through the procedures they have practiced to deal with each type of hit. Last year, twelve of these drills were held. So far this year, 25 have been conducted. The training exercises also often expose problems in the existing plans, which are then upgraded.
The danger is real. Syria has underground storage and launch facilities for its arsenal of over a thousand SCUD missiles. Armed with half ton high explosive or cluster bomb warheads, the missiles have ranges of 500-700 kilometers. Syria also has some 90 older Russian Frog-7 missiles (70 kilometer range, half ton warhead) and over 200 more modern Russian SS-21 missiles (120 kilometer range, half ton warhead) and M-600 missiles (250 kilometers range) operating with mobile launchers. There are also 60 mobile SCUD launchers. The Syrians have a large network of camouflaged launching sites for the mobile launchers. Iran and North Korea have helped Syria build underground SCUD manufacturing and maintenance facilities. The Syrian missiles are meant to hit Israeli airfields, missile launching sites and nuclear weapons storage areas, as well as population centers. Syria hopes to do enough damage with a missile strike to cripple Israeli combat capability. Hezbollah is also now armed with some SCUDs, but is more interested in killing civilians, and would aim their missiles at Israeli cities.