Special to WorldTribune.com
Israel “is as good as us in some areas” of military technology and its innovations have saved American soldiers’ lives, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.
In an interview with The Atlantic published on Nov. 3, Carter used Israel’s technology in dealing with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) as an example. IEDs killed many American soldiers in Iraq.
“The Israelis were really quite ingenious in this area and we got a lot from them,” Carter said. “There’s no question that lives were saved as a consequence of their (help). They’re not good in everything across the board, but they’re as good as us in some areas. They’re in a league that has very few members.”
“I hesitate to make invidious comparisons, but if you’re making comparisons to, say, the European legacy arms (industry), the guys who have made the tanks and planes and ships in Europe, they’ve been very slow to come out of the industrial age. The Israelis you will find to be more clever and more innovative.”
Carter said maintaining Israel’s military edge in the Middle East will be a major topic of discussion in the next meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Carter said Israel receives better quality weapons from the U.S. than all the Sunni countries combined, adding that Israel doesn’t believe Saudi Arabia and other Arab states will use American weapons against them. “They worry about rogue officers taking off in a one-off thing, right up to regime change, or whatever you want to call it, in Saudi Arabia, and having an entirely new show there.”
In the interview, Carter also emphasized that U.S. military action against Iran is still on the table if Teheran violates the nuclear agreement.
In an effort to show the threat was, indeed, real, Carter pointed out that as undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics in the early years of the Obama administration, he was the father of the “bunker buster” bomb that was designed to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
“It was an order from above”, Carter said, alluding to Obama, “and the order is to continue to improve it, and that’s what I do.”
Ash Carter: Anti-IED tech from Israel saved American soldiers’ lives added by World Tribune on
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