Israel Launches Amos-4 Satellite with Secret Military Payload for Spying on Iran, Syria

Israel Launches Amos-4 Satellite with Secret Military Payload for Spying on Iran, Syria

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 11:28 PM PDT

Amos-4 rocket (Israel Aerospace Industries)

The press has noted that Israel launched a new generation of “communications” satellite into orbit this week: the Amos-4.  Built by Israel Aerospace Industries at a cost of $365-million, it was successfully launched in Kazakhstan.
What is less known is that the Amos-4 has an important military payload aboard.  In fact, the Ministry of Defense is one of the most important customers for this project.  The defense minister watched the launch from a live feed in Israel.  The satellite contains advanced spy gear allowing Israel to surveill military and/or nuclear facilities in Iran and Syria.
If the IDF is to operate far outside Israel’s borders (places like Iran, for example) it needs the military capabilities offered by  Amos-4, which will provide reliable and encrypted command and control for advanced weapons systems.  IAI’s CEO even eerily characterized such systems as the “eyes of the State.”  Somehow in Hebrew, this phrase sounds warm and patriotic, while in English it sounds like it comes right out of Orwell (or Snowden).

Original version of Channel 2′s censored report

Though the news report doesn’t state this, following from Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s ability to intercept and monitor much of the e-mail and telephone traffic in the U.S., we may presume that projects like Amos-4 could enable Israel to do the same to virtually all its enemies, including some countries like Russia which are nominally not enemies.
An Israeli friend alerted me to this story, based on a Channel 2 news segment reporting the intelligence function.  But the report was censored and the cleansed version doesn’t mention any of this.
A confidential Israeli source also told me that all the Amos-series satellites are devoted to SIGINT-gathering and are affiliated with the ECHELON network, which:

…Is capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of…satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links…

My source added that Israel is the 6th – unofficial and undeclared – member of Five Eyes.  This means that the original trusted members of the intelligence alliance–the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK–decided to open their ranks to Israel, a nation not known particularly to play by the rules when it comes to intelligence matters.
Amos-4 follows from Israel’s pioneering series of space satellites, called Ofek.  First launched 25 years ago, they offered the IDF its first capability to begin spying on Iran and the military activities of other hostile nations (like Syria’s nuclear reactor in its eastern desert).  The news report notes that Israel’s satellites travel in a westerly orbit that counters that of the earth, which would diminish the likelihood that it would fall on the territory of a hostile state.
So if you’re an Israeli reading about the impressive commercial communications achievements expected from this piece of hardware, you’ll know what Israel’s intelligence apparatus is hiding from your countrymen (and women).