US Military – Israeli Technological Developments and Cooperation

(In an extensive analysis of the two way cooperation between the USA and Israel, my friend Charles Abelsohn  writes that unlike the perception that aid to Israel is one way only, the spin off for the USA cannot be underestimated)

Let`s look at several of the mind boggling Israeli military contributions, conceived, designed, manufactured and operated by an Israeli army which, a mere 70 years ago, in May 1948, had little more than out of date rifles and home made bullets, as the world, Czechoslovakia excepted, embargoed arms and ammunition to Israel in its hour of greatest need. Perhaps it was this embargo that initiated Israel`s own military industry. 

Israel may have recently surpassed the fiction of Star Wars. This year, in July 2019, Israel`s conceived, designed, manufactured and operated, and U.S.-backed, Arrow-3 ballistic missile shield passed a series of live interception tests over Alaska. The performance was perfect - every hit a bull’s eye. 

Jointly manufactured by U.S. firm Boeing Co and Israel, Arrow-3 is billed as capable of shooting down incoming missiles in space, at an altitude that would destroy any non-conventional warheads. It passed its first full interception test over the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 and was deployed in Israel in 2017.

The Arrow-3 is a bulwark against ballistic missiles launched by enemies of Israel and now also by enemies of the USA. 

America rarely purchase weapons systems from foreign countries due to national security considerations, and Israel is among only a small handful of countries from which the U.S. occasionally buys defense technologies.

Israel`s best known missile defensive system is undoubtedly the Iron Dome. The Iron Dome provides coverage against rockets with ranges of between 5 kilometers (3 miles) and 70 kilometers (43 miles), as well as shorter mortar rounds. The system uses small interceptor missiles to shoot down incoming threats assessed by a computer as likely to hit a populated area. Iron Dome ignores rockets likely to fall in an open area. According to Israeli and U.S. officials, Iron Dome has had a 90% success rate in engagements on the Gaza border.

The U.S. Army is now planning to buy a number of Iron Dome missile defense systems from Israel as a system which is able to protect deployed U.S. military service members against a wide variety of fire (ground) threats and aerial threats. 

Recently, the US military awarded a multi-million contract to an Israeli entity for the purchase of an Israeli-developed missile defense system, known as the Trophy, to protect United States tanks and armored personnel carriers from missiles and rockets. The system is made up of a radar detection system that spots incoming missiles and predicts their trajectories, and launchers that fire buckshot-like metal pellets, which cause the incoming missile or rocket to detonate away from the tank. I doubt whether science fiction conjured up this scenario.

By now the Israel in America technological development contribution to the US military is clear. It exists in many other areas of the military such as but not only aircraft systems, communications, radar and robots.