BICOM

The Pentagon plans to help Israel purchase four more Iron Dome anti-rocket systems. Head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly said yesterday ‘In our budget, we have a proposal to assist with procurement of four more batteries’. O’Reilly was referring to the $203.9 million that was added last June by US President Barack Obama.

The batteries consist of a mobile air defence system with a radar guided interceptor missile that is launched from a firing platform the size of a truck. Israel began deploying $50-million Iron Dome units two months ago to counter Katyusha-style rockets fired at population centres from the Gaza strip. The first was set-up near Beersheba, a southern city twice hit by rockets during a March flare-up of cross-border violence. The second unit was deployed last month to the coastal city of Ashkelon, north of the Gaza Strip.

O’Reilly said that the Iron Dome project has been ‘highly effective’ in combat and said that the US could benefit from understanding and examining how the system operates in action, as US troops in the future may face similar threats in combat zones.