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Hamas salvoes spur Israeli rocket defense rethink
Spurred by a surge in Palestinian rocket salvoes and charges of arms industry protectionism, Israel is rethinking its rejection of deployable foreign defense technologies so a local system can be produced. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has staked his reputation on Iron Dome, a device in the works at Israeli state weapons firm Rafael that would use missiles to shoot down the short-range rockets favored by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.But Iron Dome will not be operational before 2010, a lag many Israelis consider insupportable given spiraling violence on the border with Gaza, the territory which Israel withdrew from three years ago and which Islamist Hamas seized last year. There are also ramifications for Israel's peace talks with Hamas's rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Barak would likely insist that any deal ceding the West Bank to Abbas be conditioned on deployment of a working anti-rocket apparatus. Under pressure to find stop-gap solutions, Barak is reviewing two potential substitutes for Iron Dome whose import was previously ruled out by Israel, defense officials said. One is Nautilus, a joint Israeli-American invention that uses lasers to blow up rockets and mortar bombs mid-flight. The other is Phalanx, an automated machinegun produced by U.S. firm Raytheon whose heavy bullets shred incoming shells. Senior Barak aide Pinchas Buchris flew to the U.S. state of New Mexico on Sunday to watch Nautilus -- now being upgraded under a new name, Skyguard -- in action. The mission is significant as Israeli experts long wrote off Nautilus's performance as inadequate. "Even if Nautilus is capable of only a 50 percent shoot-down rate, but can be here within eight months and at a reasonable cost of $20 million or $30 million, we'll take it," the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper quoted Buchris as saying. Posted by: Fred 2008-03-17 |
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