Tag: tunnels

Anti-tunnel technology

(screenshot of IDF Twitter page via israel21c.org)

Smugglers of drugs and illegal migrants using tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border may want to keep an eye on Israel. The American government, after all, is co-sponsoring the tunnel-detection technology now being developed by Israeli engineers.

Described by the Hebrew media as the underground equivalent of Iron Dome anti-missile defence system, this latest innovation made world headlines upon the announcement that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) uncovered a two-kilometre-long, concrete-lined tunnel on Israel’s Gaza border.

While the Israeli government has been funding its development for five years, few details about the new system have been reported until now. News reports say that up to 100 companies – including Iron Dome’s developers, Elbit Systems and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems – are involved in assembling the detection system. Military units, Shin Bet security agency officers, civilian engineering, infrastructure contractors and tunnel construction experts are also credited with helping.

“The search for tunnels is at the top of our priority list … and we will not spare any efforts,” said Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon, following the IDF announcement that it found a tunnel extending from southern Gaza into Israeli territory.

The fine details about how the anti-tunnel technology works are still under wraps but, according to Yedioth Ahronoth, dozens of Israeli-developed sensors gather information from the field and transmit it to a control system for analysis using advanced algorithms. The system, says the report, can identify the length of the tunnel and its exact location without false alarms.

“We do whatever we can to find a technological solution,” Maj. Gen. Nitsan Alon, head of the IDF operations directorate, said at a briefing. “Dealing with the phenomenon of tunnels is very complex, and the state of Israel is a world leader in this field. This battle demands from us persistence, creativity, and also responsibility and good judgment.”

According to a report in Defence News, Israel’s Ministry of Defence has invested more than $60 million in anti-tunnel technologies. In February of this year, the Financial Times reported that the United States will provide $120 million over the next three years to help develop complementary technologies.

An Israel Today report says Israel is building a counter-tunnel barrier along its Gaza border that “will also feature a state-of-the-art fence, complete with sensors, observation balloons, see-shoot systems and intelligence gathering measures, as well as an underground wall.”

A video of the IDF discovering a Hamas tunnel in southern Israel can be found at youtube.com/watch?v=yETrQXh2FZU.

Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

Tunnels pose serious threat

Weapons recovered from a Hamas tunnel. (photo from IDF/FLICKR)

“One hundred Israeli schoolchildren killed in Hamas attack.” Israelis say this would have been just one of many similar headlines announcing untold loss of civilian life had Operation Protective Edge not been launched last month. The goal of the operation was to silence the seemingly endless barrages of Gaza rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns, and to detect and destroy the vast network of underground tunnels dug beneath Gaza and into Israel by the Islamist Hamas terror organization.

As details of the tunnel system became public, Israelis were at once fascinated and infuriated to learn specifics of the intricate Trojan-horse-like network lurking beneath their communities; an engineering feat so potentially lethal that the national discussion is rife with unsubstantiated worries about terrorist plans for the execution of “an Israeli 9/11.”

Frequently heard were comments like, “Surely the high-tech nation should have the ability to detect tunnels!” while others ask how such an elaborate feat of engineering and construction could have proceeded right under the noses of the military in a security-savvy country with vast counter-terrorism experience.

In October 2013, Israeli army intelligence located entrances to one such tunnel just a couple of hundred metres from the entrance to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, a collective community in southern Israel near the border with Gaza.

On a tour of that network, standing at ground level, one can see the tunnel split in the middle, its branches extending deep into the earth, with one entrance/exit nearly a mile away – through Israeli territory and into the Gaza Strip – and the other a mere 600 metres (almost 2,000 feet) to the right: exiting into Israeli territory.

Moving closer required man- oeuvring through a steep downward 46-foot trek, assisted by the steadying hand of an IDF officer to navigate the distance from the surface to the underground passageway itself. Crawling through the deceptively small opening and out of the desert’s summer heat into the coolness of the subterranean concrete-encased structure, it was surprising to find myself standing upright, able to see far enough to sense the vast distance it covers. Though visibility was limited by the dearth of ambient light, helped only slightly by the lighting unit attached to our camera, the immense dimension of the tunnel was perceptible, the elaborate nature of the structure striking. From the sophisticated construction to the array of cables, conduits, finished ceilings, communication lines and pulley systems, it made sense that each tunnel was estimated to have required several years and millions of dollars to build – mostly by hand, with jackhammers and shovels.

Also discovered in many of the recently destroyed tunnels was a variety of weapons, army uniforms, motorcycles, chloroform and handcuffs: macabre “kidnapping kits.”

Read more at themedialine.org.