Israel shoots down unidentified drone

Jerusalem (CNN) -- The Israeli air force shot down a drone approaching the nation's coast Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

An Israeli F-16 shot the drone with air-to-air missiles, an Israeli military official told CNN. It went down five nautical miles off the coast of Haifa, and Israeli naval forces were searching the area while an investigation was initiated, the Israeli military said.

"I view with utmost gravity this attempt to violate our border," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a prepared statement. "We will continue to do everything necessary to safeguard the security of Israel's citizens."

Thursday's incident marked the second time an unmanned aircraft had been intercepted in Israeli airspace within the past seven months, the IDF said.

In October 2012, Israeli warplanes tracked and eventually shot down a drone over the country's northern Negev Desert.

That drone did not carry any weapons or explosives, Israeli officials said at the time. They declined to discuss the drone's route or whether it had approached any sensitive facilities.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for sending the drone, which Israeli officials at the time said appeared to have originated in Lebanon.

Hezbollah frequently flies drones over Israel, but the military rarely bothers to shoot them down, Michah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations said at the time.

Boston bombers planned attack on Times Square

CHICAGOTRIBUNE: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said today the two men accused of carrying out last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon had additional bombs and planned a second attack on New York's Times Square.

The brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's original intent when they hijacked a car and its driver in Boston last Thursday night was to drive to New York with bombs and detonate them in Times Square, but their plan fell apart when they became embroiled in a shootout with police.

“Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said at New York City Hall. “He and his older brother intended to drive to New York and detonate those explosives in Times Square.”

One law enforcement source said earlier this was based on what surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told investigators in a Boston hospital. He is recovering from gunshot wounds in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was formally charged on Monday with crimes that could carry the death penaltyOfficials said the Tsarnaev brothers had six remaining improvised explosive devices and, after realizing they had been identified from surveillance images in Boston, spontaneously decided to drive to New York and set off those explosives. The six remaining devices included one pressure cooker bomb, as used in Boston, and five smaller pipe bombs.

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How to steal a UAV - The Interceptors Club for only 99 cents!

For the next 48 hours only you can purchase The Interceptors Club and the Secret of the Black Manta on SMASHWORDS  for less than one dollar! on purchase use coupon code: GG37E  to get it at the sale price.

Click here to read more about it an purchase a copy 

REVIEWS:

Review by: longtermproject on April 25, 2011 :     
Amazing book, when this book hits its climax, you CANNOT put it down..... I hope it comes out in print format, so I can add it to my collection of all time favorite books!
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Ian Metson on April 23, 2011 :     
A great read for all ages. Given that it's a thriller based upon what may or may not be 'out there', Steve's treatment is especially credible to those with an interest in the subject matter. All too often I lose interest with fiction based upon Area 51-type stories when the roots of credibility become incredible and this is definitely not one of those. I liked the characters, found their traits amusing as I recognise the same in those I know. Clearly, it's fiction loosely based around Steve's own personal experiences and he is hopefully proud of producing a good, difficult to put down, read.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Jim Whitten on April 23, 2011 : 
The Black Manta was a fun easy read and the discriptive adjectives were well done. The first third of the book was in the realm of possible while the last third was in the realm of sci-fi. If such a "plane" existed, no country on this planet could stand up to its fire power. Many more books could be written with the theme of some of those countries trying to learn the secrets of the Black Mantra.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Phil Patton on Dec. 18, 2010 : 

This is a thriller with a human side. It is all about secrecy and the mystery of technology and the sinister and the innocent I would compare to another novel that might come as a surprise: To Kill A Mockingbird. Why? Because both books take on deep and important issues through the eyes of kids. In TKAM it is race, here it is the nature of knowledge and suspicion. As someone who has seen government and organizations at work, I sense truth and insight here. Highly recommended. Many stars!
(reviewed long after purchase)

Review by: makitup on Oct. 25, 2010 :     
Was a fun read. I enjoyed it and recommend it especially to scanner/radio hobbyists.
(reviewed long after purchase)

Review by: Greg Hillen on Oct. 07, 2010 : (no rating)
I just finished reading Steve’s book, The Interceptors Club And The Secret Of The Black Manta. It was honestly a fun read. I read a lot of Dale Brown and Stephen Coonts and this book is in the same genre, but less heavy and more light hearted. It may, in general, appeal more to younger readers, but as a service brat and early reader of Hardy Boys and Tom Swift novels, I was quite comfortable with it. And as a 34 year DoD employee, I recognized a lot of the terminology as fairly accurate. The pace is slightly slow at first while characters and plot line are developed, but picks up in good time and becomes a bit of a page turner. The plot is all too plausible with a twist at the end that I really liked. At the price you really can’t go wrong. I’ve paid a lot more for books I liked a lot less. I recommend it.

Greg Hillen
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Michael Wilhelm on Oct. 03, 2010 :     
One cool book, both for teens and adults. I'm over 30 and totally enjoyed it. The story is fresh and and unlike anything I've read. It reads more like a true account then fiction - in fact I can't but help wonder how much of this book is based on real life.

The Interceptors Club is a unique adventure story that takes the reader into the minds and eyes of a group of precocious teenagers (air force brats) who become caught up in a dark world of espionage, stealth aircraft and military intrigue. Although it is a big book - comparable to the size of Harry Potter books - I never found myself bored or tempted to jump ahead. The characters are three dimensional and fresh and talk like kids talk. It's funny an amazingly detailed look into the "black" world and even has a tad of spirituality thrown in to boot. In short - one cool read.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

CIA asked National Counterterrorism Center to put Boston bomber on watch list over a year ago.

By Greg Miller and Sari Horwitz,


Washington Post: The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

The agency took the step after Russian authorities contacted officials there in the fall of 2011 and raised concerns that Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was killed last week in a confrontation with police — was seen as an increasingly radical Islamist and could be planning to travel overseas. The CIA requested that his name be put on a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center.

That database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a data storehouse that feeds a series of government watch lists, including the FBI’s main Terrorist Screening Database and the Transportation Security Administration’s “no-fly” list.

Officials said Tsarnaev’s name was added to the database but it’s unclear which agency added it.

The CIA’s request came months after the FBI had closed a preliminary inquiry into Tsarnaev after getting a similar inquiry about him from Russian state security, according to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The new disclosure suggests that the U.S. government may have had more reason than previously known to scrutinize Tsarnaev in the months leading up to the bombings in Boston. It also raises questions as to why U.S. authorities didn’t flag his return to the country after a seven-month trip to Russia last year.

Law enforcement officials said that the request to the FBI in 2011 originated from fears by the Russian government that Tamerlan was a threat to Russia and would commit a terrorist act in Russia -- not the United States. The request came from Russian federal police to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

“There was a concern he might have some kind of ties to terrorism,” said FBI spokesman Paul Bresson. “We did everything legally that we could do with the little bit of information we had. After we did, we found no derogatory information.”

The FBI gets hundreds of similar requests a year from foreign governments, said a law enforcement official. The findings were reported back to Russia and Russian authorities were asked if they had any more information for the United States to investigate about Tamerlan and they did not.

“They were satisfied,” said the official. “We had checked on their information. And no further information was provided.”

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Israel buying MV-22 Ospreys

DOD BUZZ: The surprise announcement that Israel was acquiring the tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey for its special forces has led other countries to take a second look at buying the aircraft that has greater range and speed than conventional helicopters.

“I can tell you that several countries are very, very interested” in the Osprey, said William Schroeder, a spokesman for Bell Boeing of Fort Worth, Tex.

Schroeder declined to name the interested countries, but the United Arab Emirates has been haggling with Bell Boeing for more than a year on unit prices, and Britain and Canada have also inquired about the Ospreys.

The sale of Ospreys to Israel — if coupled with buys from other states — could insure keeping the production line open past the current phase out date in 2018.

U.S. and Israel officials have yet to say how many of the $70 million Ospreys that Israel will buy, or the price that the Israelis will pay.
Defense Department officials last Friday made the surprise announcement that the Israelis would be getting the Osprey ahead of a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Hagel, who was in Israel Monday in part to seal the deal on the Ospreys as part of a major arms, will be in the Emirates later this week on his Mideast swing to wrap up details on a total $10 billion in arms sales to Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

At a joint news conference in Tel Aviv with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Hagel said the weapons for Israel included “anti-radiation missiles and advanced radars for its fleet of fighter jets, KC-135 refueling aircraft, and most significantly, the V-22 Osprey, which the U.S. has not released to any other nation.”

“The introduction of the V-22 into the Israeli Air Force will give the Israeli Air Force long-range, high-speed, maritime search-and-rescue capabilities to deal with a number of threats and contingencies,” Hagel said, but the Israelis have already made clear that they have much more in mind for the Ospreys than sea rescues when the aircraft becomes operational with its special forces.

Ya’alon said that the arms deal showed the commitment of President Obama to guaranteeing that Israel maintained a qualitative military edge in the region against any potential adversary.

“We see your commitment in the Joint Strike Fighter program and the presidential approval of other advanced capabilities, such as the V-22 for Israel,” Ya’alon said.

Ya’alon said the arms deal with the U.S. should also send a strong signal to Iran.

“Without a credible military option,there’s no chance the Iranian regime will realize it has to stop the military nuclear project,” Ya’alon said.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AT DOD BUZZ