Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Amaunet]

CT, that is a good question.

I agree, our financial future is not in our hands, it is a card others can play.

The United States believes that Israel has a capability to develop and launch ICBMs although it has never tested one.
Palmikhim
http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm



Israel Achieves ICBM Nuclear Capability
Satellite Launch Shows Capacity To
Send Payload To Any Location On Earth
Geostrategy-Direct Intelligence Brief
©2002 WorldNetDaily.com
7-7-2

Israel has achieved the ability to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Israeli officials and experts said the nation's ICBM capability was demonstrated by its launch in May of the Ofeq-5 satellite into space orbit. The satellite was carried by a Shavit-class booster. The Shavit booster was launched westward against the earth's orbit, officials said. The direction was decided to prevent the Ofeq from falling into enemy hands if it failed in an eastward launch.

"The minute Israel can launch a satellite into orbit around the earth to an altitude of hundreds of kilometers, it established the capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to any location on earth," Moshe Gelman, a leading Israeli space expert at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, said on Wednesday. "We are talking about the laws of physics."

Gelman said the path of a satellite booster is the same as that of a ballistic missile. The difference is the target - with a booster requiring greater energy to ensure that it does not fall to earth with the satellite.

In 1998, Israel failed to place its Ofeq-4 satellite into orbit. The failure was attributed to the Shavit launcher.

Officials said the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries, which builds the Shavit, introduced changes in the booster for the latest launch. They said the changes were said to have focused on the rocket engines meant for the first two stages of the Shavit. The engines are produced by the state-owned Israel Military Industries.

Israel's ICBM capabilities were first said to have been demonstrated in 1988 when the Ofeq-1 was shot into orbit. Ofeq-1 had a payload of about 180 kilograms (400 pounds). The Ofek 5 weighs about 300 kilograms (660 pounds).

The Shavit is said to be a derivative of the Jericho surface-to-surface missile. The Jericho is believed to have been last tested in the Mediterranean two years ago.

U.S. officials have determined that the Shavit has a range of 7,200 kilometers (4,464 miles), the Israeli Ha'aretz daily said. The newspaper quoted Professor Steve Fetter, a physicist at the University of Maryland, that the Shavit could deliver a 775 kilogram warhead a distance of 4,000 kilometers (2,480 miles).

Israel's Jericho missile silo is said to be located outside Bet Shemesh, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) southwest of Jerusalem. The London-based Foreign Report asserted that a six-man Palestinian insurgency cell captured on Monday had attempted to blow up the missile facility.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28169

http://www.rense.com/general26/iscap.htm



On June 26, the Israeli newspaper of record, Ha'aretz, cited two top Israeli space scientists, who declared that Israel now has the capacity to fire missiles at targets anywhere on earth. Prof. Moshe Gelman, head of the Asher Institute at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, boasted to Ha'aretz that "From the moment the State of Israel has the capability to launch a satellite into orbit around the earth at a height of hundreds of kilometers, it established [its] capability to launch, by means of a missile, a payload to any location on the face of the earth."

Dr. Gelman's words were seconded by Avi Har-Even, the director-general of the Israeli Space Agency (ISA), which recently launched the Ofek 5 satellite, who told Ha'aretz's Amnon Barzilai that the Ofek 5 launch had two strategic objectives: providing Israel with an independent spy satellite capability to monitor military activities in targeted countries throughout the entire Near East. "The second involves Israel's launch capabilities."

http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2002/2926denuclearize_mideast.html

Russia claims to be ahead of the United States in nuclear arms technology, however, in my opinion, the ultimate weapon on this planet is the KGB.

My question is, where is the`Losharik'? Is it aimed at Israel, Washington or Iraq?

I will send another post with recent developments regarding one of our past topics. -Am




In an interview to mark the 50th anniversary of the first hydrogen bomb test in Russia the former Atomic Energy Minister, Viktor Mikhailov, said Russia had maintained its lead over the U.S. in nuclear arms technology ever since the construction of the first thermonuclear bomb. The U.S. was the first to explode a thermonuclear device, but Russia stole a march by building the first hydrogen bomb. On August 12, 1953, Russia successfully tested a ready-to-use 7-ton thermonuclear bomb ten times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. had dropped on Japan in 1945. By that time the Americans had only built a thermonuclear device that was the size of a three-storied building and weighed 65 tons.

According to Dr. Mikhailov, Russia has never relinquished its nuclear lead since that time.

"Whereas before 1953 we trailed the U.S. in the sphere of nuclear weapon technology, after 1953 — and to this day — they have been trailing us," he told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily.

Excerpt, old link
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/stories/2003081801641400.htm