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Cancelled U.S.-Israel Defense System Could Have Helped Kenneth R. Timmerman TEL AVIV, Israel -- One cruel irony for the weary civilians of northern Israel - many of whom have spent the past four weeks in crowded, overheated underground shelters - is that their ordeal may be been totally unnecessary.
Working together with the United States, the Israeli army has developed "Star Wars" technology capable of shooting down the Katyusha-type rockets Hezbollah has been launching into Israeli homes and schools and hospitals.
But the military brass and their civilian paymasters decided that the cost of the ground-based laser system was simply prohibitive. "If it had been pushed energetically two or three years ago, then maybe we could have had a prototype by now," said Uzi Rubin, the "father" of Israel's Arrow strategic missile defense system. "That prototype system could have been used to defend sensitive installations in Haifa Bay, for example, or downtown Haifa itself," he told NewsMax in an exclusive interview in Tel Aviv his week. "I think it was a mistake to cancel this program." Story Continues Below
The idea of intercepting Katyusha rockets is not new. Israeli leaders have been seeking ways to insulate the northern part of the country from terrorist groups based in Lebanon for 25 years. In 1982, they invaded Lebanon all the way up to Beirut to eliminate the PLO, which had been shooting Katyusha rockets into northern cities and villages for years. An initial test of a joint U.S.-Israeli ground-based, high-energy laser known as Nautilus successfully destroyed a short-range rocket in flight in February 1996 at a site in New Mexico, just nine months after work on the project began. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres decided to launch development work in April 1996, after Hezbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon fired over two dozen Katyushas into northern Israel over a 17-day period. Benjamin Netanyahu, who succeeded Peres as prime minister shortly thereafter, committed Israel to sharing the initial $89 million development costs with the U.S. in July that same year. An extensive test campaign in New Mexico in June 2000 with Northrop Grumman and several Israeli defense contractors proved that the Nautilus laser could intercept and destroy salvos of incoming Katyusha rockets well before they could slam into their targets. The ground-based laser canon also destroyed mortars and conventional artillery shells. "The problem with Nautilus," said Rubin, "was that it was just a proof of concept demonstrator, never a deployable weapons system. It was just a lot of tanks and pipes." By 2004, however, that changed. Teaming with U.S. partners, two Israeli defense companies developed a mobile version of the Nautilus laser, known as the Mobile-Tactical High-Energy Laser, M-THEL. But defense minister Shaul Mofaz and then-prime minister Ariel Sharon determined that the $200 million price tag was prohibitive.
"If M-THEL had been pursued, we could have had a prototype by now," Rubin says. The idea was to package the huge chemical laser into two or three large containers, that could be hauled by trucks to protect sensitive sites. Defense ministry spokesperson Rachel Niedak declined to comment for this article or to make available the current director of missile defense programs, Arieh Herzog. One advantage of the M-THEL system developed by Northrop Grumman and the Israelis was that each "round" fired by the giant laser gun cost just $3,000, making it the cheapest missile defense system per hit ever conceived. "The system puts up a protective bubble," Rubin said. "It could have put most of downtown Haifa underneath it." Highly-sophisticated ballistic tracking radar would pass off targets to the laser gun, so that only the rockets headed toward civilian or sensitive industrial areas would be hit. "Only one in 10 are actually hitting houses or causing damage," Rubin said.
But the drawback to M-THEL was its limited range. According to Northrop Grumman, its engagement envelope – the protective "bubble," Rubin called it – only extended around five kilometers from the laser.
To protect all the population centers in northern Israel would require dozens of systems, at a cost the Israeli government was not prepared to pay.
Even Rubin, who lectures around the world on the missile threat and on new technologies capable of countering it, admits that "M-THEL is a bit like using Star War weapons against Chinese fireworks. But it is possible."
Early in the current conflict, Israel positioned Patriot missile batteries in Haifa, but Israeli military sources acknowledged they were not aimed at the Katyushas, but as an insurance policy against eventual strikes by longer-range missiles.
Earlier this year, Israel and the United States began work on short-range missile defense system, using ground-launched, anti-missile defenses. Raytheon and the Israeli defense electronics firm Raphael won the prime contract.
"Most of the incoming rockets are slow," says missile defense expert Uzi Rubin. "There is no technical problem to make missiles to intercept them."
On Tuesday, Shimon Peres – now deputy prime minister – told Israel Army radio that Israel should mitigate the threat from Katyushas and other Syrian and Iranian-made rockets by "developing and applying technology to intercept them in flight." Former internal security minister Uzi Landau, who lost a battle last year for the Likud leadership to Benjamin Netanyahu, has long advocated U.S.-Israeli missile defense cooperation. He was not in government when M-THEL was cancelled. "I'm not sure how effective [M-THEL] would have been for the situation we find ourselves in, with hundreds of attacks spread thinly over a large area," he told NewsMax from his home outside Tel Aviv. "You would need a large number of laser canons to be effective. It all depends on how much you are prepared to invest." While Israel could invest in technology "to intercept every bullet" being fired at it, "I say you need to get to the source where those bullets are emanating and take it out," he said. He faulted the government for not pressing harder and faster into Lebanon on the ground.
"If they were to do what is really necessary on the ground, that would provide the answer to the Katysusha attacks," Landau said.
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