Re: Israels Next ABM Shield
- From: "Ariadne" <ariadne.mac@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 11 Jul 2006 09:43:58 -0700
jgarbuz wrote:
Israels Next ABM Shield
by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (UPI) Apr 24, 2006
Most international attention on Israel's ballistic missile defense
programs has focused on the Arrow interceptor system, the U.S.-bought
Patriot PAC-3 and their capabilities for intercepting Shehab
intermediate-range missiles from Iran or Scuds that would be fired from
Syria.
But now, with little fanfare, Israeli is also energetically pushing
ahead with some of its traditional major U.S. high-tech corporate
partners with a radically new design to protect the Jewish State from
extremely short-range Palestinian missiles. This decision also has
revealing strategic implications for the policies of the new government
currently being formed by Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in
Jerusalem.
The U.S. missile systems maker Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, has joined
the Boeing and Israel Aircraft Industries consortium that is
participating in Israel's Ministry of Defense Israeli Short-Range
Ballistic Missile Defense tender worth $50-100 million, Globes-Israel
Business News reported on April 4. A consortium of Raytheon and the
Israeli Rafael Armament Development Authority is also participating in
the tender, Globes said.
The tender is part of the Israeli Ministry of Defense's Homa project
and it is intended develop an anti-ballistic missile defense for the
short-range Qassem rockets that Palestinian guerrilla groups like
Islamic Jihad have fired into Israeli territory. The Qassems give
Palestinian guerrilla groups the tactical capability to threaten major
Israeli industrial infrastructure installations in the Ashkelon port
area. Israel has huge oil and chemical facilities there.
The threat is wider: Qassem rockets are little more than low-tech
simple knock-offs of old World War II Soviet technology rocket mortars
or Katyushas. They are easily and widely produced currently in Gaza and
they also have the capability of threatening Israel's main airport,
Ben-Gurion Airport, from the West Bank across the security barrier
built by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Olmert's predecessor, to
defeat the bloody Second Palestinian Intifada.
The so-called fence, or barrier, has proven highly effective in
dramatically curtailing the slaughter of Israeli civilians including
women and children caused by suicide bombers. Over a four-year period,
at least, 1,100 of them died. But the barrier effectively confirms that
Israel has ceded security control of much of the West Bank as well as
Gaza to Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. And Hamas has so far
shown no desire to restrain attacks on Israel from its territory.
Sharon had no hesitation in sending the Israeli army in full force to
carry out bloody retaliatory attacks in Gaza, the West Bank capital
Ramallah and Jenin during his five years as prime minister. But Olmert
may prove more reluctant to take such ruthless and drastic action,
especially under pressure to exercise restraint from President George
W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Further, Olmert has
already publicly indicated that he would like have Israel's permanent
borders with the West Bank and Gaza stabilized by 2010 at the latest
and possibly by as early as the end of 2008.
The plans to develop a new BMD system to defend Israel against very
short range missile attacks such as it is already suffering from must
be seen in the context of this strategy. They appear serious. And it is
striking that they are being developed with major corporations that
have long enjoyed very close ties to Israel and its own main defense
contractors.
The IAI-Boeing proposal is based on their collaboration on the Arrow
anti-ballistic missile. They plan to adapt Arrow technology to
intercept short-range rockets, Globes said.
Alliant is based in Minnesota and has a factory in Mississippi. It
already builds rocket engines for Israel's Arrow anti-ballistic missile
interceptor that is produced by IAI and Boeing. If IAI and Boeing win
the SRBMD tender, Alliant will manufacture engine components for the
rocket, which is based on the Arrow, and which forms the core of the
defense system, Globes reported.
"The Boeing-ATK partnership has been a success story for the Arrow
program," Boeing Integrated Missile Defense Vice President Debra
Rub-Zenko told Globes. "Our exclusive teaming agreement for SRBMD will
build upon that vital relationship, ensuring an advanced solution for
Israel's short-range missile defense needs."
As with previous Israeli tenders, the U.S.-Israeli consortia
participating in the SRBMD tender want their systems to be eligible for
U.S. government funding for the proposed project, Globes said.
The U.S. Congress has already approved $133 million for the Arrow
program in the coming fiscal year, including $10 million for defense
against short-range missiles. Bringing in Alliant into the SRBDM
project could ensure that a large congressional bloc will support
budget appropriations for short-range missile defense, provided that
IAI and Boeing win the tender," Globes said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld can be expected to enthusiastically
support the new program: He has always been a leading enthusiast for
every kind of new BMD program and has green-lighted every kind of close
Department of Defense cooperation with Israel too.
The on going U.S, struggle with the Sunni Muslim insurgency in central
Iraq has also brought home to U.S. defense chiefs the value of having
some kind of very short-range BMD system that could provide at least
partial protection from such attacks.
However, the key point in the Globes report is the fact that Israeli
top military planners are now wrestling to reconcile two conflicting
realities: They recognize that Hamas may rule Gaza and much of the West
Bank with undisguised enmity towards them for years to come, leaving
many of Israel's main population centers and strategic targets within
range of attack by very short range missiles. Yet they do not want to
reoccupy the territories needed to prevent such attacks as that would
render them vulnerable again to more suicide bomber attacks from the
Palestinian population they had re-conquered. The new very short range
BMD program may offer a way to at least partially escape these twin
dilemmas..
Source: United Press International
.
Dilemmas is correct. What a pity there aren't
weapons that, rather than intercepting, turn the
attack around at 100 times the force.
.
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