Note to Ayatollah Khamenei: “Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.”

by Hugh Fitzgerald

From CTech, news of yet another, quite special Israeli startup:

On paper, it sounds like just another startup. A young company developing advanced technology, being managed with great secrecy. In fact, Tomer is a company owned by the government of Israel that is meant to act as a center of national expertise in the field of rocket propulsion….

Tomer employs 540 people, many of them engineers in the fields of physics and chemistry. The company manufactures the long-range Arrow missile, Elbit’s artillery and aerial rockets, and the first and second stage engines of Shavit, Israel’s satellite launcher that places the IDF’s spy satellites in space. According to foreign sources, the Shavit launcher is based on the Jericho ballistic missiles that can reportedly carry nuclear warheads….

Tomer is currently in talks with several companies in Japan and the US, negotiating the direct sale of its rocket engines for foreign projects. The entry into the Japanese market is the result of a memorandum of understanding signed last year between the defense ministries of Israel and Japan which opened the usually closed Japanese market to Israeli companies.

In the meantime, Tomer is working to improve the veteran Shavit satellite launcher that would allow it to carry heavier loads into space. The Shavit rocket is currently known to carry the Ofek satellites, that weigh around 350 kilograms. The ability to send heavier objects into space would allow the construction and launching of improved satellites containing cameras with higher resolution and a better quality radar.

The company is also considering entering the field of hypersonic speeds, developing a propulsion system that can operate both in and out of the atmosphere and sustain speeds that greatly exceed the speed of sound — Mach 5 and above. Modern defense systems currently struggle to contend with the threat of hypersonic missiles. Russia has already unveiled such a system and the US is believed to be working on one….

In late April, the Iranians launched a cyberattack on Israel’s water supply, attempting to raise the level of chlorine to render it undrinkable. The attack was foiled within a matter of a few minutes. No damage was done.

On May 9, Israel retaliated against Iran with its own far more effective cyberwarfare, bringing the bustling Shahid Rajaee port terminal at Bandar Abbas – where 60% of Iran’s seagoing traffic is handled — to an abrupt halt. The computers that regulate the flow of vessels, trucks, and goods all crashed at once, thereby creating massive backups on waterways and roads leading to the facility. There were traffic jams leading to the port that were miles long. Even several days later, ships were still waiting to offload their cargoes. There were knock-on effects farther inland too, with transportation networks described as being in “total disarray.” If Israel could do that much damage, in what was clearly meant just to let the Iranians experience a small example of what the Jewish state’s cyberwarriors were capable of, Tehran must surely be rethinking the wisdom of messing with Jerusalem again.

And now we learn about another Israeli start-up. The company is called Tomer. It is working on improved spy satellites (cameras with higher resolution, better quality radar), heavier rocket loads, hypersonic speeds, and more that you might guess at by reading between the lines. What’s not to like?

Note to the Supreme Leader, lent by Hollywood for just the right occasion: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

First published in Jihad Watch.