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Israel braces for missile salvos in next war

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, April 19, 2007

TEL AVIV — Israel's military expects the next war to include intense rocket and missile attacks on the Jewish state.

Officials said the military has projected that the next war would be marked by missile and rocket attacks from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. They said this could mean that thousands of rockets would rain on Israel, exceeding that in the war against Hizbullah in mid-2006.

"We experienced thousands of rockets in the second Lebanon war," Brig. Gen. Daniel Milo, commander of air defense forces, said. "We will experience more in the next war. This is clear to us."

In the 34-day war that ended in August 2006, Hizbullah fired an estimated 4,500 short- and medium-range rockets into Israel. The Israeli military failed to stop the rocket salvos, which intensified during the last days of the conflict.

In an address to a missile seminar at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday, Milo suggested that the military might not be more effective in a future war with Hizbullah, expected as early as mid-2007. He said the air force could not detect Katyusha or other short-range rockets concealed in underbrush or in bunkers.

"If the Katyusha is under the bushes or sand, no F-15 [fighter-jet] will find it," Milo said.

In 2006, the Defense Ministry launched a project to develop a system to protect Israel against short- and medium-range rockets and missiles. The project, awarded to the state-owned Rafael, Israel Armament Development Authority, was expected to take at least two years until a prototype was ready.

Officials said the ministry has set requirements for an inexpensive kinetic interceptor. They said the ministry was still considering near-term rocket defense solutions from Israeli and U.S. defense firms.

"We are getting all sorts of proposals," Brig. Gen. Daniel Gold, director of the Defense Ministry's Research and Development Directorate, said. "We examine them all the time."

Gold, an air force officer, said he did not expect any rocket defense system to be hermetic. He said a system that could stop 95 percent of incoming rockets would be capable of point defense.

"To make the system affordable, you have to have break-throughs in electronics and radars," Gold said.


Copyright © 2007 East West Services, Inc.

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