<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile Ñ Israel's military changes gears as U.S. balks on weapons assistance

Israel's military changes gears as U.S. balks on weapons assistance

Monday, April 20, 2009   E-Mail this story   Free Headline Alerts

TEL AVIV Ñ Israel is gearing up the development and production of indigenous munitions so as not to be overly dependent on U.S. weapons.

"We have to end our exclusive dependency on the United States in the area of air bombs," an official said.

The official said the administration of President Barack Obama has delayed U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.

Officials said the Defense Ministry has ordered an effort to resume indigenous munition development and production. They said this was a key lesson from the Israeli-Hizbullah war in 2006, when Israel quickly exhausted its supply of U.S.-origin air munitions.

The administration, amid a brewing dispute over establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, was also said to have held up the processing of new Israeli arms requests.

The Israeli military used a range of indigenous munitions during the 22-day war with Hamas in January 2009. Most of the munitions were produced by the state-owned Israel Military Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

The munitions were identified as the PB500A1 by IMI. The PB500A1, reported to be a new advanced weapon, was described as a laser-guided hard-target penetration bomb based on the 1,000-pound Mk-83 general purpose bomb.

Officials said the PB500A1 was used against Hamas weapons tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip. They said the bomb could penetrate two meters of reinforced concrete.

Rafael was said to have used advanced air-to-ground missiles installed on unmanned aerial vehicles. The missiles were said to have included miniaturized versions of the Spike missile.

Each brigade combat team, in the first such arrangement, was allocated a UAV squadron, which included such assets as the Hermes-450 and the Heron systems.

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