Israel Aircraft Industries and Boeing are celebrating the successful test of their Arrow anti-ballistic missile against a simulated Iranian missile attack.
The test of the Arrow II Block 3 interceptor was conducted over the Mediterranean Sea on Dec. 2 against a phsyical target simulating an Iranian Shehab-3 medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) flying below the Arrow Weapon System's performance envelope. The AWS had never before been successfully tested at so low an altitude, Jane's Defense Weekly reported.
The Arrow is manufactured jointly by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. The Shehab-3 is capable of reaching Israel's densely populated core region around Tel Aviv where 70 percent of its six million people live, and it is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
"We have never before tried the Arrow against the Shahab characteristics, but we know now that we are capable of intercepting all existing ballistic missile threats in the region, whether conventional or non-conventional, and we are developing capabilities to deal with future threats," Arieh Herzog, the director of the Israel Missile Defence Organization, told JDW.
Following the interception, IAF's MIM-104 Patriot low- to high-altitude air-defence batteries joined the test, simulating an additional interception at lower altitude. Israel's ballistic missile defence concept is based on a two-tier layered defence in which the AWS constitutes the higher layer and the U.S.-manufactured Patriot that defended Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf war against SCUD missile attack from Iraq provides an additional, lower layer.
Source: United Press International
