FILE PHOTO: A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched from the Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska during Flight Test THAAD (FTT)-18 in Kodiak, Alaska, U.S., July 11, 2017. Leah Garton/Missile Defense Agency/Handout via REUTERS
BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. military has deployed its most advanced air and missile defense system to Israel for the first time, U.S. and Israeli military officials said on Monday.
The deployment, which began in March, was intended to test the U.S. military's ability to rapidly deploy such weapons around the world, said a spokeswoman for U.S. European Command.
The U.S. Army plans to purchase "a limited number" of the Iron Dome air defense systems that Israel has been using since 2011 to test if they would be a good fit for protecting soldiers from aerial threats.
The Israeli military followed up on its weekend strikes in Syria the same way that any modern military might: By taunting its regional foe Iran with a silly-ass tweet.
An Israeli Air Force pilot was able to make an emergency landing of his F-15 fighter last week after its canopy suddenly came off at 30,000 feet, and newly-released audio shows how the harrowing ordeal sounded in the cockpit, according to Haaretz.
The audio of the incident starts off normal, with a voice asking about what altitude the pilot will be maintaining. And then... all hell breaks loose once the canopy comes off, amid screaming and outside wind. As Haaretz noted, the pilot and navigator were also dealing with an air temperature of around minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
A Russian satellite-based mapping company may have accidentally revealed the locations of at least two sensitive NATO facilities in the Middle East in what can only be described as the OPSEC version of the Streisand effect.
The Kremlin is attempting to tamp down tensions following the downing of a Russian Ilyushin Il-20M Coot-A intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli raid on Assad regime forces.
