Israel's enemies will gain access in the coming years to precision guided missiles that will allow them to target individual buildings, former defense minister Ehud Barak warned on Wednesday.
Barak spoke at a conference held at the Tel Aviv-based International Institute for National Security Studies to mark Israel Science day, which was organized by the Ministry for Science, Technology and Space.
Science is serving hostile enemy forces, Barak said. "We will continue to see many more missiles, a lot more accuracy, and within five years the missile will reach a maximum level of accuracy that will allow them to choose which building in Israel to hit. These means will proliferate, and will be cheaper for terror organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza," he added.
"In the future we will see terrorism backed by science and technology," the ex-defense minister said.
Threats from biological and chemical attacks by non-state actors also present growing dangers, Barak warned.
"Somewhere in a small lab, hostile elements sit planning the future weapon of mass destruction. This is an unprecedented terrorism potential," he stated, adding, "We can't wait until threat is realized, as the gap will be difficult to close."
Israeli scientific and technological advances allow it to receive intelligence alerts, achieve deterrence, and grant it the ability to win wars, Barak said.
Barak also criticized senior IDF officials who for several years opposed the development of the Iron Dome rocket defense system, saying they lacked foresight.
"Opposition to the multi-layered defense system was surprising. It came from the element that was supposed to activate [the system]," Barak said.
In January, Dr. Uzi Rubin, an architect of the Israeli missile defense program, told an INSS conference that Israel's enemies are seeking to arm themselves with precision-guided heavy rockets and missiles.
"The Iranians took the Zilzal 2 and turned it into a guided rocket. The third generation of it contains a homing sensor and a GPS. The Syrians can have this capability too, to create a fully guided M-600 rocket with a GPS," Rubi said. Hezbollah will seek to import such guided weapons, he added.