Latest news with #missile
Al Arabiya
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Yemen missile launched toward Israel ‘most likely' intercepted: Israeli army
The Israeli army said on Saturday that a missile launched from Yemen toward Israeli territory had been 'most likely successfully intercepted.' Israel has threatened Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis - which has been attacking Israel in what it says is solidarity with Gaza - with a naval and air blockade if its attacks on Israel persist. Since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis, who control most of Yemen, have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade. Most of the dozens of missiles and drones they have launched have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.
Arab News
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Yemen missile launched toward Israel ‘most likely' intercepted, Israeli army says
The Israeli army said on Saturday that a missile launched from Yemen toward Israeli territory had been 'most likely successfully intercepted.' Israel has threatened Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement — which has been attacking Israel in what it says is solidarity with Gaza — with a naval and air blockade if its attacks on Israel persist. Since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis, who control most of Yemen, have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade. Most of the dozens of missiles and drones they have launched have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Israeli army says it is working to intercept missile launched from Yemen
CAIRO, June 28 (Reuters) - The Israeli army said on Saturday it had identified the launch of missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory, adding that the aerial defence systems were operating to intercept the threat. Sirens sounded in several areas in Israel following the launch, the army posted on the Telegram messaging app.
The National
17 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
UK Space Command rises to meet the challenges on the frontier beyond planet Earth
The bright yellow track of the missile ocean launch streaks upwards from Earth on a near-vertical trajectory towards space. Instantly a warning appears across the bank of computer screens in the crucible-like operations room of UK Space Command. 'Missile in flight,' says one of the operators at UK Space Command. There is a question that they need to very rapidly answer: is this going to threaten a major UK or allied satellite? It becomes rapidly apparent that this is not a rocket fired in anger from the Ukraine conflict or by Iran. Instead its line of travel is heading unflinchingly towards the heavens, an anti-satellite (Asat) weapon released to hunt its prey more than hundreds of kilometres above Earth. The stakes are high. In geostationary orbit 35,000km above Earth is one of the four Skynet 5 satellites, a $5.4 billion communications system that serves all of Britain's highly sensitive government communications, from special forces, spies in the field to the prime minister giving commands to nuclear submarines. If it is destroyed it will create a major vulnerability in UK defences. The Asat's yellow streak surges upwards gathering speed but now giving a strong indication of what its target might be, as within 10 minutes it has breached Earth's atmosphere. The computer readout indicates about 20 satellites in the missile's path, giving their nationalities as Russian, Chinese, American, Australian and British. As the weapon soars upwards, the number of satellites on an elliptic course narrow down to just five: two Russian, two Chinese and the UK's Skynet 5. The staff at Space Command have about 15 minutes to notify the operators to begin evasive manoeuvres and carry out defensive actions. 'The first shot in the next war going to be in space,' says one of the officers, as the scenario played out at the 24/7 operations centres comes to an end, after The National had been put in the hot seat to make the decisions on whether or not the Asat was a threat. But we were not given the options on defensive measures that, beyond rapid manoeuvring, could be taken – they remain classified. Space wars The last decade has made it became apparent that space will be another dimension in future war and the military personnel at the centre have been deployed to the furthest frontier the armed forces patrol. When Britain's military realised it had to have much better 'situational awareness', it set up Space Command in 2021. It has since grown to a force of more than 600 personnel, three quarters from the RAF, based at former Bomber Command headquarters near High Wycombe, housed in a series of unremarkable 1930s redbrick buildings that had been designed to resemble a village to put off German bombers in the Second World War. As in the Second World War, behind these walls a hub of specialists are assembled to observe the sky far above for any threats to Britain or its allies. To date there has never been an aggressive Asat launch, although Russia, the US, China and India have all shot down their own satellites to demonstrate their capabilities. That threat is evident in the low-key offices of Space Command, where personnel know that one consequence of a satellite being destroyed is that the timing signal for financial transactions would result in a loss of £1 billion a day, and that 18 per cent of the UK's economy dependent on space. Protect and Defend In what was the first time it had opened its doors to the press, the UK Space Operations Centre demonstrates a template for those countries operating in space – more than 80 currently – on how they can, as Space Command's logo urges, to 'protect and defend' the 811 UK vehicles in orbit. 'From a national security point of view, space is a contested, congested and competitive domain and we need to make sure as our adversaries advance their capabilities that we're able to deal with what that throws up,' said Maria Eagle, the Minister for Defence Procurement, as she officially opened the operations centre. With the global space economy projected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035, the dimension is about to get a lot more congested and competitive. Asteroid alert The British government is putting cash alongside its words with £13 million of funding for a constellation of new telescopes that will be arrayed across most of Britain's 14 independent overseas territories. They will be on hand to enhance the constant looking-towards-the-heavens operation of the space officers on duty who spotted the 876 'uncontrolled re-entries' of last year, or the nearly 30,000 collision risks to UK satellites, of which 20 resulted in an official alert. It is not only foreign powers but space itself that throws up many hazards, with 3,206 'close approach asteroids' reported and one actual 'asteroid alert' that ultimately came to nothing. The centre also monitors for space weather alerts, including the coronal mass ejections from the Sun which could wipe out power grids and satellites, particularly during a 'solar maximum' period, which Earth is currently experiencing. Given the 12,000 or so satellites currently orbiting Earth, space command is one of many now monitoring the skies to avoid a collision that could lead to a cascade of crashes causing the Kessler Effect, which could take out all orbiters, with catastrophic consequences. Satellite grabbers Ultimately it appears that the nations racing to colonise space will present the biggest dangers, and not just from their weapons. Space junk caused by the debris of obliterated satellites still presents hazards, including that from 2007, when China shot down one of its own older weather satellites, and 2021, when Russia conducted a similar exercise. But nations are also developing elaborate space weapons that could pose dangers to Earth and in the cosmos, with a 'satellite grabber' device being among the most feared. 'The National Space Operations Centre does vital work in monitoring and protecting our interests,' Ms Eagle told The National. 'It's a recognition of the fact that our adversaries are active there, and we need to know what's going on.'
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Iran's missiles reportedly hacked mid-flight over Israel
By Published: Updated: A tech expert has revealed that his firm may have witnessed an 'exotic new' hack that tricked Iranian missiles into plunging into the Mediterranean Sea during the Iran-Israel war. The war between Iran and Israel, which began in mid-June following a series of Israeli strikes on military, nuclear and civilian positions, saw both nations fire salvos of missiles and drones at each other. Like many missile systems found across the world, Iranian missiles rely on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data to find their way to their targets. Sean Gorman, the co-founder and CEO of a tech firm that is working to improve location services on mobile phones, believes that he and his team witnessed a new defensive tactic that involved tricking missiles into flying against their programming. Spoofing normally works by sending a powerful radio signal that is stronger than GNSS signals from satellites, forcing a device to listen to the fake information. This means that devices believe they are at a false location. Ordinarily, spoofed GNSS data looks, to the device, like it has instantly teleported to another location. But Sean believes that what he and his team have seen is a highly sophisticated version of this meant to mimic the arcing flight paths of missiles and send them to safer locations. Sean said: 'Missiles are guided munitions. They all track latitude and longitude and elevation the same way we navigate in our cars or the same way aeroplanes navigate. You're basically providing that same navigation system in ammunition so that it lands in exactly the right place. Jammers and spoofers have been incredibly effective at preventing guided munition from landing where you where they wanted to land and maybe where you instead getting it to go somewhere else or to fail.' Sean said that his team began tracking spoofing and jamming practices while volunteering in Ukraine, and found that phones loaded with their software were good at tracking these types of attacks. Following an American government grant to further this research, phones loaded with Zephyr software were sent across the world to places known for their frequent electronic interference attacks. One mobile phone with Zephyr's app made its way to Haifa in northern Israel, which like many cities in the nation, came under fire from Iranian missiles. It was through this mobile phone that Gorman and his team noticed a peculiar signal that different from spoofing and jamming techniques seen in the past. Sean told MailOnline: 'The phone was in Haifa and the positions that the phones were reporting were off in the ocean. And instead of it being teleported to a fixed location, instead we see this arc. There was a synthetically generated position that went in a curve. It's one measurement from one phone, but it's a new behaviour or pattern that we haven't seen.' He added that while he wasn't 100% sure this was a new 'push spoofer... it's certainly not a pattern that we've seen before in that you know'. This arcing pattern is likely to have been developed to trick the drone into following the fake data. 'If you're teleporting with a big jump and it's fixed, that would be a much different pattern than a guided munition that is on a trajectory. You want that thing to think it's still on the trajectory. It continues on the path that the spoof operator is pushing,' Sean said. 'They don't realise they're being spoofed because they're continuing to go on a trajectory. That would fool a drone.' While it's not clear from Sean's analysis exactly who perpetrated the hack, the signal is believed to have come from the Middle East. Many nations around the world are developing this kind of technology, Sean said, with the invasion of Ukraine being one of the key crucibles. He said: 'There are lots of countries that have sophisticated technical engineers and specialty within GNSS. And each of those countries are constantly trying to evolve their [rivals'] electronic warfare capabilities. We see this with the Russians and Ukrainians, who are constantly iterating and trying to defeat each other's countermeasures in this kind of cat and mouse game. Countries are investing and trying to provide countermeasures and defeats of those countermeasures so they can still operate in a battle situation like we're seeing in the Middle East.' But with the increased competition for these types of techniques comes the risk it will be used outside a military context, even in the Iran-Israel war. Last week, Frontline tanker Front Eagle and dark fleet tanker Adalynn collided last week near the Strait of Hormuz. The two oil tankers were brought to a halt, following a fire on the desk of the Front Eagle which was later extinguished. But in the days leading up to the collision, the UK's Maritime Trade Operations issued a warning that 'increasing electronic interference' was being reported in the STrait of Hormuz. Sean said this event pointed to an increasing willingness for warring parties to use spoofing and jamming techniques that could have wider effects on civilians and commercial routes. 'We're increasingly seeing this happen all over the globe and cause issues with global commerce with supply chains, with aviation. So even outside of the military context, we're seeing this more and more in our daily lives. Jamming and spoofing are both prolific, though we see spoofing less frequently and it's a bit harder to detect than jamming.' 'So while it was interesting to see spoofing activity happening they're both risks to civilian and commercial operations. Collisions could be an issue both from an aviation standpoint, as well as a maritime standpoint', Sean said, adding that the ability to 'detect spoofing will be critical for civilian safety. That'll be a really important area of R&D investment and where what we'll need technological capacity both on a civilian and a defence perspective.'
