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| Israel To Receive First Arrow Missiles By Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg 15/6/05 Jun 16, 2005 Boeing since 2000 has worked with Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd., Israel's largest defense company, to co-produce missile canisters, motor housings, electronics and the ceramic caps that house radar on the weapon's tip, all built to Israeli blueprints. ``Together with Boeing, we should double our original monthly rate by the end of the year,'' Arieh Herzog, director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, said in an interview June 7 in Washington. The Arrow system is Israel's main defense against ballistic missiles such as Iran's new Shahab-3. It's never been fired in combat and some analysts are skeptical as to how effective it might be. The U.S. Congress has given $1.5 billion to Israel's Arrow program since the late 1980s, worrying that this ally was vulnerable to attack from nearby adversaries such as Iraq, Syria and Iran. Interest in Arrow development quickened after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when Iraq fired Scud missiles into Tel Aviv. The threat from Iraq was canceled by the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Syria, Israel's neighbor to the north, has Scuds and is trying to develop longer-range missiles, according to the CIA. Iran has become only more menacing: Its Shahab-3 can reach targets from Tel Aviv to western India, the U.S. director of naval intelligence said last year. ``Threat development in Iran is not finished by development of the Shahab 3,'' Herzog said. ``They are now developing a new generation with longer range and more sophisticated capabilities.'' The Boeing co-production agreement is a key part of countering that threat, Herzog said. ``Boeing is providing a huge part of the subsystems -- about half of each motor, more than half of the electronics and mechanical parts,'' Herzog said. Chicago-based Boeing, the second-largest weapons contractor, received its first Arrow contract in 2003. Its Integrated Defense Systems since February 2003 has received $103 million in production contracts and could receive as much as $225 million by 2008 if all options are exercised, Debra Rub, vice president of the company's missile defense sector, said in a June 7 interview in Washington. State-owned Israel Aircraft, which makes military and civilian aviation products, is the prime contractor and is responsible for systems integration and final assembly. Its headquarters are near Ben-Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv. ``This has been a very successful collaboration and as long as the program runs we will have it shared in the U.S.,'' Moshe Keret, IAI president and chief executive officer, said in a June 7 interview in Washington. Israel deployed its first Arrow batteries in March 2000. Israel says the Arrow demonstrated in testing it's capable of defeating medium-range missiles such as Scuds and the Shahab-class missile. Arms control analysts offer limited praise, saying if the program was having testing problems it's unlikely Israel would acknowledge them. ``The Arrow program is almost 20 years old and has some modest successes to show for its efforts,'' said Joseph Cirincione, missile proliferation expert for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. ``It has done well in tests, but it still does not appear capable of intercepting the kind of difficult targets that the extended-range Scuds presented during the 1991 war,'' Cirincione said. ``Few of the tests have been realistic.'' Boeing's goal by later this year is to deliver five booster sets a month to IAI, Rub said. Boeing assembles major sections of the interceptor in its plant in Huntsville, Alabama. The project also involves about 150 employees of other companies in nine states, she said. The companies include: Alliant Techsystems Inc., which makes motor and other propulsion parts in Iuka, Mississippi and Clearfield, Utah, facilities; Patterson Machine Inc., of Union Grove, Alabama, which makes castings; Wildwood Electronics Inc., Madison, Alabama, which makes cables; Manes Machine & Engineering Inc., Fort Collins, Co., which makes front and rear missile canisters; Sanminia-SCI Corp., Huntsville, which makes data links; and Ceradyne, Inc.'s thermo materials, Atlanta, which makes the ceramic caps and heat shields. Boeing is the prime manager of the ground-based missile defense system intended to protect Hawaii and the continental U.S. from North Korean missile attack. The U.S. hasn't declared the system operational and the last two intercept tests failed. Boeing's contribution to the Arrow effort ``is dubious, as the American firm has had its own humiliations with the failure of recent U.S. ground-based interceptor tests and persistent problems with quality control,'' Cirincione said. ``The partnership seems largely designed to ensure that the United States continues to pick up the check for the bulk of Arrow's expensive development and procurement,'' he said. |