This is an important milestone in strategic defense.
Over a dozen years after the project was launched, the Arrow-2, designed and built by Israel, successfully shot down for the first time a live Scud missile in flight in a test launch Thursday over the California coast.Israeli defense officials hailed the test as a milestone for the US-funded, one-of-a-kind missile defense system.
But before the champagne came an enormous amount of tension in the mission control room, where about a hundred Israeli and American officials and air force officers sat in near-silence monitoring the incoming Scud rocket. The Scud was launched from a platform at sea at its maximum range, which defense officials refused to divulge.
Two minutes after its launch, the Green Pine radar picked it up and the Citron Tree battle management center relayed the information to the Arrow-2 battery. About three minutes later the Arrow interceptor was launched. It rose for 90 seconds to about 40 kilometers and detonated.
"There was a huge explosion and it destroyed the Scud," Herzog said.
The Scud was reportedly one the Untied States had located and removed from Iraq. But Defense and Israeli industry officials could not confirm this.
The Arrow-2 intercepts an enemy missile as it reenters the earth's atmosphere, far from Israeli territory. The system includes not only the missile, but also the 'Green Pine' tracking system that can detect and track several targets simultaneously. The system is controlled from the 'Golden Citron' command module, from which several Arrow-2 missiles can be operated, and which discerns between real targets and 'fake' ones.
The question remains, though, will the Arrow-2 be able to strike down the faster Iranian Shihab-3 rocket? This is the question that technicians and defense officials have been grappling with since the Iranians developed the Shihab-3, which could soon be armed with an existential, nuclear threat against the Jewish state.
More information:
Israel Aircraft Industries
Israeli-Weapons.com
U.S. Missile Defense Agency