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How the Israeli Navy Stays Two Steps Ahead of the Enemy
(JNS-Israel Hayom) Yaakov Lappin - As Israel's adversaries equip themselves with growing numbers of advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, the Israel Navy's Weapons Systems Department must ensure that countermeasures are installed onboard Israeli ships in time. The department's technological personnel are soldiers in their early 20s who have completed degrees in electrical engineering, mathematics and physics as part of their enlistment. Air-defense systems, electronic warfare, radars, sonars, command and control, missiles and other systems must be developed quickly enough to allow Israel to stay two steps ahead of Hizbullah and Iran. A senior naval officer said their counterparts in Western militaries were shocked at the age of the Israeli personnel. "We have conducted trials with partners. Their personnel in equivalent departments is made up of people in their 50s or 60s. I show up with a group of 'kids.' They used to smile when they saw that, but now they know us." One of the key projects of the navy is to develop sensors and command systems that hermetically seal Israel's sea borders, both on the surface and underwater. To achieve this, complex algorithms were developed for radar and sonar so that operators could quickly tell the difference between an enemy scuba diver and a sea turtle.