YouTube War

YouTube War: "

The Israel Defence Forces have taken to YouTube to bolster their claims that they are - as far as possible - targeting military objectives in Gaza, that they are serious about avoiding civilian casualties, and that Hamas has deliberately turned people into human shields by storing weapons in or under inhabited buildings.

This video shows people loading rocket-shaped devices on to a truck, apparently unaware of the reconnaissance platform overhead - a UAV, judging by the apparently tight turning radius.

We've been critical here of ground commanders' addiction to this kind of imagery, but what is's being used for here is operationally legitimate - the use of the target's behavior over time to confirm hostile intent. There is a common factor between this and the tunnel strike seen here:

That factor is that we are only seeing the end of a long and complex process. The sensors used here are not that good at detecting targets in a cluttered environment, which requires wide-area, long-term surveillance and other means, probably including human intelligence.

Also noteworthy is 'the sequence that starts about 55 sec into the second video, in which three weapons are seen to strike the same tunnel'less than two seconds'apart. Either there were several laser designators involved, or the weapons were using scene-matching electro-optical guidance.

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(Via Ares.)