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Israel Shows Off New
Anti-Missile System

By Mark Heinrich
11-7-2

PALMACHIM AIR BASE, Israel (Reuters) - Israel put its $2.2 billion Arrow anti-ballistic missile system on rare display on Thursday in an apparent warning to Iraq should it target the Jewish state again in retaliation for any U.S. attack.
 
Shocked by the failure of U.S. Patriot missiles to intercept 39 Iraqi Scuds fired at it during the 1991 Gulf War, Israel has conceived the first custom-designed anti-ballistic missile in time for a possible U.S. winter campaign to disarm Iraq.
 
"It is like a bullet able to hit a bullet," Arrow chief engineer Boaz Zevi told reporters given a tour of Palmachim Air Base where four mobile launchers containing six missiles each point at the sky from desert near the Mediterranean coast.
 
Aside from a steering defect since corrected, the 23-foot-long Arrow has passed seven tests showing it can detect, track and destroy a missile in under three minutes at altitudes of more than 30 miles, a senior military briefer said.
 
He said the Arrow's Green Pine radar -- a 50-by-17-foot dish at Palmachim -- had enabled Israel to slash the time between the launch and detection of a hostile missile by 70 percent since 1991.
 
An Iraqi Scud would take about eight minutes to slam into Israel from launch pads Israeli and U.S. officials believe are in western Iraq, around 400 miles from the Jewish state.
 
Briefers said the Arrow marks a quantum advance from the Patriot, an anti-aircraft system imperfectly adapted to down missiles traveling at far higher speeds than planes and unable to reach space, the flight path of ballistic weapons like Scuds.
 
"We have reached huge capability in the past year, building up the very unique Arrow and a lower layer of air defense provided by upgraded Patriots," said Brigadier General Yair Dori, commander of Israel's air defense system.
 
"In 1991, we had almost nothing. We'd only begun building air defenses. After just 10 years, we have a very robust, active air defense. We can give Israeli civilians a safe feeling about the next conflict," he told reporters.
 
ARROW YET TO FACE 'SALVO' TEST
 
Military sources said the Arrow had not yet been tested against a "salvo" of missiles fired at once -- the stiffest challenge for any missile defense system and a possible scenario if Iraq targets Israel again -- but would be soon.
 
Independent Israeli air defense experts estimate the Arrow's success rate at 95 percent.
 
The other five percent unsettles Israelis because they fear Iraq might tip missiles with lethal anthrax spores or sarin and VX gases, weapons Baghdad denies it possesses.
 
But the Arrow was geared to wipe out threats at outer-space altitudes, reducing the risk of chemical or biological residue falling to Earth, the senior military official said.
 
Iraq, its military clout eroded by defeat in 1991 and international trade sanctions since, is thought to have no more than a few dozen ready missiles in contrast with its 1991 arsenal.
 
Military sources said Israel could answer with more than 200 Arrows -- costing $3 million apiece -- based at Palmachim and at a recently established second base in central Israel.
 
"I'm sure (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein has the motivation to bring Israel into the next conflict. I think he will try. But I'm sure less missiles will fall into Israel, and I want to believe none will," Dori said.
 
Half the Arrow's research, development and production costs from the project's inception in 1988 have been borne by the United States, Israel's guardian ally. State-owned Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. developed the Arrow.
 
Soldiers demonstrated hoisting an Arrow launcher from horizontal transport mode to battle-ready upright. Four launch pads, each with six tubes, stood on trailers a few hundred yards from the coastline.
 
In the Fire Control Room nearby, air defense officers simulated a response to an attack on monitors showing green maps of the Middle East with Iraq at one end and Israel the other.
 
Like a war game, black blips depicting Scuds streaked westward over Jordan or Syria and blue blips denoting Arrows beelined eastward from the Mediterranean coast. "Kill" impacts sparkled over northern Israel's Galilee region or the West Bank.
 
Officials said the Arrow network covered not just Israel but the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are fighting Israeli occupation and where 200,000 Jews live in 145 settlements.





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