[A-List] Israel: tooling up for war

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Israel deploys anti-missile shield to defend cities against Scuds
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 7 October 2002

ISRAEL has deployed the world's first custom-built anti-missile shield to
protect its vulnerable coastal cities against Saddam Hussein's hidden
arsenal of Scud missiles.

Two batteries of the locally designed Arrow interceptors have been
positioned at Palmachim air force base south of Tel Aviv and at an unnamed
location in central Israel to meet the threat of attack by chemical or
biological warheads in the event of a US-led invasion of Iraq.

Most military analysts agree that Baghdad would order the launch of Scuds
against Israel to provoke retaliation and harness Arab and Islamic opinion
in support of Saddam.

Israel has already said that it would respond "proportionately" to any
attack on its citizens, up to and including the use of Jericho ballistic
missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.

The Israelis were strong-armed by the US into staying out of the 1991 Gulf
war to maintain coalition solidarity, despite the fact that 39 Iraqi Scuds
were fired at Tel Aviv and the Dimona nuclear test complex in the southern
Negev desert during the conflict.

Israel's defence industry has since spent £1.2bn - about 50% of which was
paid for in American military aid - developing the Arrow, a supersonic
interceptor designed to destroy incoming missiles before they begin the
descent to their targets.

Unlike the ineffective US Patriot, an anti-aircraft system hurriedly pressed
into service as a "Scudbuster" in 1991, the Arrow is a dedicated
anti-missile system which aims to cross paths with approaching Scuds before
they re-enter the atmosphere and destroy them with an explosive charge
linked to a proximity sensor.