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Israel successfuly tests anti-rocket missile: TV
Jerusalem (AFP) March 26, 2009 Israel has carried out several successful test launches over the past two days of missiles to stop short- and medium-range rockets, Channel Ten commercial television reported on Thursday. The missiles managed to locate, track and intercept the rockets in flight, whether fired singly or simultaneously, it reported. Channel Ten said the missiles, which can destroy rockets with a range of up to 70 kilometres (43 miles), will become operational in 2010 when the first batch is delivered to the Israeli air force. The missile system, named Iron Dome, was the target this month of a scathing report by Israel's state comptroller, who accused the defence establishment of wasting time and money on the proposed rocket protection shield. "Huge sums have been wasted because of hazardous decisions for the development of an anti-rocket defence system over the past eight years," State Comptroller Micha Lindenstraus said in her annual report, which paints a picture of bureaucratic waste and irregularities. Iron Dome and the associated Magic Wand defence system are being developed by Israel's Rafael weapons research company. In the summer of 2006 during the second war in Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah movement fired more than 4,000 Katyusha rockets with a 40-kilometre range, forcing around a million inhabitants of northern Israel to flee south or take refuge in shelters. Israel said its "Cast Lead" onslaught against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in December and January was aimed at ending of the firing of rockets from the Palestinian enclave towards southern Israel. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com All about missiles at SpaceWar.com Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com
BMD Focus: Czech vote dooms BMD plan
Washington (UPI) Mar 26, 2009 The pro-American Czech government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek fell Tuesday after being defeated in a vote of confidence in Parliament. That event may have sounded the death knell for U.S. plans to defend the Eastern Seaboard of the United States from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons. |
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