Israeli fighter pilots scrambled warplanes on Friday after radar spotted a potential airborne enemy flying from Syria only to discover the culprits were migratory birds, army radio reported.I worked with radars of many kinds for a lot of years, air search, height-finders, fire control, deepspace trackers, even police radar units, and never once did any of the operators I knew mistake a bird for a warplane.
Israeli radar picked up the birds over the Syrian border but officers were unable to rule them out as enemy aircraft from the screen, the radio said.
For starters, warplanes scoot along pretty fast, hundreds of MPH, while birds - migratory or not - plod along at a very leisurely 20/30 MPH. For most trained and proficient radar operators, a target screaming in at 30 MPH is not mistaken for a warplane.
If it were me, I would take those idiot "officers" out of the radar centers and put them to peeling potatoes, and get some trained and proficient personnel in there before they start another war because of a seagull or two.
But then again, it is the Israelis, and they never need much of an excuse to open fire, so for them, maybe a Syrian seagull invading Israeli airspace is sufficient cause to let loose.
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