Category: Well I thought it was neat!
“One year from now – Israel will be the first country to have partial laser protection. In two years there may be complete protection,” said Yuval Steinitz.
By YONAH JEREMY BOB, JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Israel’s ground-breaking laser system experiment carried out in the south of the country by the Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development (DDR&D, or MAFAT in Hebrew) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
(photo credit: DEFENSE MINISTRY)
Israel will have partial laser defenses by this time next year, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems chairman Yuval Steinitz told Army Radio on Sunday.
“One year from now – Israel will be the first country to have partial laser protection. In two years there may be complete protection – against missiles, shells, rockets, or anything else. This will protect us both in the South and in the North,” said Steinitz.
Israel’s push for laser air defenses
This past February, senior Defense Ministry official Brig.-Gen. (res.) Danny Gold said Israel’s air-defense lasers, when fully deployed, will be able to shoot down the drones Iran has been sending Russia to use against Ukraine.Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence conference at Tel Aviv University at the time, the MAFAT [Directorate of Defense Research & Development] director said his ministry was working on developing “the next generation of using lasers.”
He talked about multiple successful tests destroying rockets “with a very sophisticated laser-weapons system…. We have done the same for mortars, rockets and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], like the Iranian UAVs they are sending to Ukraine. The same concept of UAV, we can shoot them down.”
In February 2022, then-prime minister Naftali Bennett proclaimed that Israel’s ability to use lasers had progressed significantly and could be operational much sooner than people had expected.
BORDER Police officer checks a unit at a laser system aimed to intercept incendiary balloons, near the Gaza border. (credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)This past January, outgoing IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi told The Jerusalem Post, “The laser-defense system is truly great news. It will be both land- and air-based. I do want to be cautious regarding timeframes. In another two years, we expect to deploy systems along the Gaza Strip border to test this tool’s effectiveness.
“It has worked very well in field tests. If this experiment works – and we continue to integrate and enhance the laser-defense system over two years – we will move as fast as possible to deploy it across the entire North. I cannot commit to a specific number of years. I don’t want to be optimistic and I also don’t want to be pessimistic.”
Kohavi added, “I know that there has been great progress over the last three years, and we invested a lot of money in this. We defined the laser-defense system as having multiple benefits that we would need to invest a lot in. I am happy that it has progressed so much.”
Top: Webley Mark VI .455. Bottom: Enfield No. 2 .38.
The British have never been ones to march in lockstep with the rest of the world, and a little evidence of that is their choice of handguns in World War II. While most of the world’s major military forces had by that time converted to one sort or another of autoloader, the British decided to stick with revolvers.
Mostly they used four types of double action revolver, although in 1940 the British government even bought some Colt Single Action Army revolvers to help arm their home guard. (Today collectors refer to those as “Battle of Britain” guns.) Issued to regular British forces, however, were their domesticly manufactured Enfield No. 2 .38 and Webley Mark VI .455. The Webley Mark VI .455 had been adopted in 1916, and although it had been officially replaced about 1928 by the Enfield No. 2 .38, it was still in common use.
Top: S&W Hand Ejector No. 2 .455. Bottom: S&W Military & Police .38.
Not having enough of either Webley or Enfield to go around, they also bought many thousands of S&W K-frame Military & Police revolvers chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge. And furthermore, they still had and consequently used many S&W N-frame (Hand Ejector 2nd Models) which they had purchased from 1915 to1917 for World War I.
Duke’s S&W Hand Ejector #2 .455 factory letters to the Canadian Government in 1916.
Left to Right: .38 S&W with 190 gr. lead RN, .455 Webley Fiocchi load with 262 gr. lead RN bullet and .45 ACP Black Hills load with 230 gr. FMJ bullet.
Their choice of cartridges for these revolvers also seems strange. The .455 Webley had been with them since the 1870s as a black powder cartridge, but their Mark II version of it introduced about 1897 was loaded with smokeless propellant. By American standards, it would be considered “barely loaded.” That’s because it was rated with 265 gr. bullet at only about 600 fps. In the 1920s the British military determined a .38 caliber 200 grain bullet at about 630 fps gave about the same muzzle energy, and that’s what they converted to. Actually the case they chose to use was a twin to the .38 S&W round. That company had been chambering guns for it since the early 1870s, so when the Brits needed S&W to help them out with revolvers in the 1940s.
I’ve been told by a knowledgeable shooter/collector that prior to WWII the Brits had to reduce bullet weight on their .38s to 178 grains in order to make them full metal jacketed. Otherwise they would have been in violation to the Geneva Convention.
The Brit .38s and .455s barely dented. The big caved-in spot was done with a .45 ACP.
No Common Sense
For some strange reason, probably related to my lack of common sense, my gun trading forays these last few years have netted me samples of the four above mentioned British military revolvers. Two have some minor noteworthiness. The Enfield No. 2 .38 is marked “RAF” (Royal Air Force) and “1936,” while the S&W .455 factory letters to the Canadian government in 1916. I was even able to find a 12-round box of FMJ .455 military loads of Canadian manufacture dated 1943 to go with it. British military .38 loads have evaded me completely. For shooting I bought some of the Fiocchi .455 Webley factory loads with a 262-gr. lead bullet and handloaded some Lyman #358430 cast bullets weighing 190 gr. in the .38. Powder charge was only 2.2 grains of Bullseye. The Fiocchi .455s chronographed at 619 fps, and my .38 handloads were 10 fps faster.
So did I “test-fire” these revolvers for accuracy as any self-respecting gun’riter would do? No way. What I did was spent nine bucks at an Army surplus store for an old GI issue steel helmet. Then I set it on a fence post and fired my British WWII revolvers at it from 10 paces. The .38s wouldn’t have even given its wearer a headache. They didn’t dent it and hardly made it wobble. The .455s did dent it and it wobbled some. Admittedly these were lead bullets and not military FMJs, which might have given more penetration. For comparison, I fired a 230 grain FMJ .45 ACP factory load from a Colt 1917 revolver. It didn’t penetrate either but caved in the side of the helmet, and not only knocked it off the fence post but rolled it 20 yards down the road!
Somebody probably knows why the Brits stuck to revolvers in the years leading up to WWII, and even perhaps why they liked such pee-dunkler cartridges — I don’t. But they’re still interesting handguns, albeit only minor historical footnotes to WWII.
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Just too cool!
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