April 13: Israel Won, but One Round not a Battle Makes.

The April 13 missile attack on Israel was the event that was in the making for decades. Thousands of highly educated. strongly motivated Iranian engineers, helped by the best that Russia, China, and North Korea had to offer -- have all packed their crown jewels into a barrage of 330 flying devices (drones, ballistic, cruise) challenging the defense Israel prepared for them for similar number of years. Iran had the advantage. It is much easier to launch a warhead loaded flying device that aims itself into a stationary ground target, than it is to track it and take it out en route.

It was Edward Teller who preached to President Raegan this crazy idea of hitting a missile with a missile, Raegan launched what became known as "Star Wars". I was a small sub-contractor for this planning. It looked infeasible. And it was at the time. Technology had to advance quite a bit for this idea to be realistic. The interceptor needs to read the location, speed and direction of the missile to be hit. It needs then to figure out a meeting place based on the interceptor speed and location -- and carry out the computation fast enough. The interceptor will then have to navigate itself to that meeting point with little room for error. To avoid being hit the target missile can interject random changes -- each of which must be caught and be accounted for. And if the target missile can split to two parts that separate fast then at best only one part may be hit by the interceptor, unless the interceptor can split too.

On April 13 the Israeli interceptors triumphed. The match prepared for decades on both sides was clearly decided. But at what a price! Every move made by Israeli flying objects was captured by Russian satellites. Israel exposed so much of what it prepared for so long with such hard work, passion an smarts.

Today's missile and cyber wars are determined by the intelligence of the very top technical people on both sides. Israel has no control, no knowledge whether a Robbert Oppenheimer or a Thomas Edison was borne in Teheran 25 years ago, now preparing a round of revenge.

Iran can lose as many times as it attacks, Israel will not devastate the country, but Israel cannot lose even one encounter and live another day. There will be no other day.

So Yes, Israel deserved a day of celebration after April 13, but then it's back to the drawing board.

Memory Lane: it was a similar waiting period, a powerful enemy declared their intention to attack Israel in a major way. For weeks, like now, the country was anxious and nervous, and then came a blistering, explosive victory -- Israel was on top, and hubris oozed and flowed. The year 1967. ?The Six Days War.? Six years later Israel existence was on the line: 1973. Let us learn from history!

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