A rchive Date
[ 10-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
|
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11356-2003Jan4.html
Israeli Defenses Much Improved Since Gulf War
'Painful' Response Vowed To Any New Iraqi Attack
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 5, 2003; Page A01
TEL AVIV - When Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Israeli officials and analysts recall, Israel depended on sluggish American warnings, U.S. Patriot antimissile batteries failed to stop a single incoming Scud and more Israelis died of heart attacks in the panic to pull on gas masks and seek cover than were killed by the missiles.
Times have changed. On the eve of a widely expected new war against Iraq, Israel is deploying one of the most sophisticated missile defense systems in the world, has its own spy satellite and radar warning system and has created a vast Home Front Command to prepare citizens and medical services for potential attacks.
For the past month, Israeli military and civilian disaster preparedness teams have conducted drills for conventional, chemical and biological missile attacks in some of the country's biggest cities. Last week, U.S. and Israeli military forces began joint land and sea exercises in preparation for what might happen here in the event of a U.S. war against President Saddam Hussein's government, which officials here believe could begin within a few weeks.
"Our situation is much better today than it was 12 years ago," the Israeli army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, said at a recent national security conference here that focused on military readiness. "Israel is perhaps the most protected country in the world against these kinds of threats."
Even so, military officials acknowledge that the billions of dollars spent on improving readiness in the past decade, including the showcase Arrow missile defense system financed largely by the United States, falls far short of fail-safe protection for the cities and citizens considered most vulnerable to an Iraqi attack.
"One should not be mistaken," a senior Israeli military official said. "[The Arrow] has never been tested in a live war. There is a huge difference if you are taking Iraqi incoming missiles. Even if only one gets through all these layers here in Tel Aviv, the damage would be very great."
As a result, Israel has also improved its ability to strike back at Iraq and other potential enemies. In addition to nuclear-capable surface-to-surface missiles, air-to-surface missiles and bombs, Israel is arming three diesel-powered submarines with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, according to former Pentagon and State Department officials and a book published this summer by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Israel has long refused to confirm or deny possession of nuclear weapons, saying it would not introduce them into the Middle East. But Issam Mahoul, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, said last year that Israel has up to 300 nuclear devices. Foreign arms monitoring groups and think tanks have cited similar figures ranging from 250 to 400 devices.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his top military leaders say that, in contrast to 1991, they have given the United States no assurances that Israel will not retaliate if attacked by Iraq. Officials have said the level of a counterattack would depend on the type of weapon used and the number of casualties inflicted.
"It is not our war, and during my visit to the United States [last month] I made clear that we will not take the initiative and intervene," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said in an interview Friday in the newspaper Maariv. "But if we are attacked during the operation, we will have every right in the world to protect Israeli citizens."
He added, "If, God forbid, they use chemical or biological weapons against us, I believe we will have to respond. The decision on how we will respond must be kept secret . . . [but] it will be a very tough and painful action."
If the United States refuses - as it did in the Gulf War - to provide the "identification of friend or foe" codes, known as IFFs, that would allow Israeli aircraft to fly through U.S-patrolled airspace to conduct strikes against Iraq, Israel now has land-and sea-based missiles that could be used, according to military analysts. "We can do anything, from nuclear to nothing," said Reuven Pedatzur, a professor in Tel Aviv University's security studies program and one of Israel's most prominent military analysts.
Banking on the Arrow
In November, Brig. Gen. Yair Dori, commander of Israel's air defense forces, gathered a group of reporters around the weapon that has come to symbolize Israel's effort to thwart a repeat of the 39 Iraqi Scud missiles that terrorized this nation for weeks during the Gulf War.
"Since 1991 we have built a huge, active defense system that will give Israel the ability to survive and make civilians feel safe in the next conflict," Dori declared, standing before an Arrow-2 antiballistic missile battery at the Palmachim Air Force Base on the Mediterranean coast near Tel Aviv. "In 1991, we had almost nothing. Now we have a very active, robust defense."
Of all Israel's efforts to improve defenses, no single program has consumed more money, evoked a greater image of high-technology advances or created a grander aura of a military safety net than the Arrow missile defense system.
Thus far, it has cost just over $2 billion to develop and build. The United States has financed about $1 billion of that, according to data provided to several congressional subcommittees that have monitored the system. Military analysts estimate it will cost another billion dollars to complete.
Two Arrow batteries have been deployed, Israeli officials say, one at the Palmachim base to provide cover for Tel Aviv and another near the northern city of Hadera. A third battery is under development.
Israeli officials describe the Arrow-2 as the world's first antiballistic missile system designed to destroy or intercept medium or short-range missiles in the stratosphere. It is supposed to detect and track missiles as far away as 300 miles, launch a missile at nine times the speed of sound and intercept an incoming missile up to 55 miles away, according to military analysts.
The Arrow missile is designed to disable an incoming warhead by exploding within 40 to 50 yards of its target, and the battery has a command and control system created to intercept as many as 14 incoming warheads, according to military specialists. However, military officials acknowledge that all previous tests have involved a single target. The first simulated test of the Arrow against multiple incoming missiles is scheduled for today, according to the Defense Ministry.
"The Arrow test program has been far too limited, narrow in coverage and rushed to make a convincing war-fighting case for the system," Anthony H. Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee five months ago.
Israel also has a limited stockpile of Arrow missiles, according to U.S. and Israeli military officials. In the most recent U.S. defense budget, Congress approved an extra $70 million to help increase production from two per month to six per month, according to congressional testimony. The additional missiles will be built by Boeing Co. in the United States.
To back up the Arrow defense system, the United States is providing at least two additional Patriot missile batteries to supplement three Patriot batteries already in Israel. The Patriot missiles, which have undergone improvements since the 1991 war, are designed to intercept missiles at lower altitude and shorter ranges than the Arrow, essentially targeting missiles that the Arrow misses.
About 1,000 U.S. troops and officers just began a two-week training exercise that Israeli and U.S. officials said is the first test of interoperability among the Patriot and Arrow missile systems, and the radar and warning systems, aboard a U.S. Aegis-equipped cruiser stationed off Israel.
The Patriot missile, designed to intercept aircraft and later modified to target missiles, performed dismally here against Iraqi Scuds during the Persian Gulf War, military analyses determined after the war. "The findings and analysis carried out in Israel during and after the war produced no authenticated proof that al-Hussein [Scud] warheads were hit or destroyed by Patriot missiles," Tel Aviv University's Pedatzur told the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations.
Studies by Pedatzur and others of videos and Patriot data found that the Patriot often missed incoming warheads by hundreds of yards and often could not distinguish between a Scud's warhead and missile fragments when the weapon began breaking up as it plunged earthward. When Patriot missiles exploded near an incoming Scud, they frequently just knocked the Scud off course and sent it smashing into nearby neighborhoods.
Some U.S. military officials dispute those findings. Since the United States rushed seven Patriot batteries to Israel during the 1991 war, the U.S. military has invested heavily in improving the Patriot system. But congressional testimony this summer revealed continuing operational problems with the missiles and development of a new version that has not yet been deployed.
When questioned about the Patriot's accuracy by the Senate Armed Services Committee 18 months ago, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz testified, "Today our capacity to shoot down a Scud missile is not much improved from 1991."
An Earlier Warning
The danger of an Iraqi attack is only part of the equation guiding Israel's military investments over the past decade, according to senior officers. Yaalon, the Israeli chief of staff, told participants in the military conference that war against Iraq "could accelerate into a regional war."
Surrounded by neighbors it considers hostile - Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya - Israel has funded military improvements with a range of potential enemies in mind. Israeli military officials also have said they fear Hezbollah forces in Lebanon could take advantage of a U.S.-Iraq war to launch missiles across Israel's northern border.
In May, the military launched a new spy satellite, the Ofek-5, which circles the globe 230 miles above the earth's surface and reportedly can photograph objects as small as a yard long. Israeli media reports have quoted anonymous military officials as saying the satellite has concentrated its cameras primarily on Israel's neighbors, particularly Iraq.
The Arrow missile's Green Pine radar system is supposed to give military officials a five-to-seven-minute warning of a missile launch, a jump over the three minutes or less that Israel received during the first Scud attacks in 1991, when launch information was fed from U.S. satellites back to the United States and then bounced to Israeli officials.
Even so, U.S. military experts said Israel would lean heavily on improved U.S. satellite and early warning systems in any conflict with Iraq.
In recent years, the Israeli navy has purchased three Dolphin-class submarines from German contractors at a cost of about $1 billion. The Carnegie Endowment published a report this summer saying that with modifications to its submarine-based missiles, Israel had completed the last leg of its nuclear triad. The sea-based nuclear capability would dramatically enhance Israel's ability to retaliate if an attack incapacitated its land or air defenses.
Although the Israeli military has refused to comment on the reports, the navy commander, Yedidya Yaari, said at the military conference, "What we can do at sea . . . is totally different from what we have known in the past." He added that the sea service is now "available and flexible for a whole gamut of capabilities."
'Are We Well Prepared?'
Minutes after the sun set on an overcast winter day two weeks ago, military commanders and civil authorities received an alert saying a Scud missile had smashed into a densely populated working-class suburb of Tel Aviv.
Over the next 25 minutes, as police, fire and military vehicles converged on the neighborhood, two more explosions sounded nearby. Startled neighbors peered out windows or dashed to the scene. Some said they expected to find yet another suicide bombing or other terrorist attack.
Instead, they came upon one of the numerous drills Israel's Home Front Command has been staging in recent weeks in preparation for a possible attack from Iraq.
For Col. Gili Shenhar, who has been chief of development for the Home Front Command, the debate over whether the Arrow and Patriot missile systems can stop an incoming missile is all but irrelevant.
"We don't deal with asking whether [a missile attack] will or won't happen," Shenhar said. "We ask, 'Are we well prepared?' Nuclear, chemical or biological missiles can hit one of our cities. Our goal is to prepare our country for that."
During the 1991 war, 74 Israelis died during missile attacks, but only two were killed by Scuds. Four suffocated from improper use of their gas masks, and 68 died from heart failure or heart attacks blamed on war-related stress, according to the National Insurance Institute.
Created in the aftermath of that conflict, the Home Front Command has become a major component of the Israeli military. During peacetime, the command drills and trains for crises. During a domestic disaster or war, it has the authority to take control over local police, civil authorities and emergency medical services to organize the response.
"What happened in Israel after the Gulf War is the same that happened in the U.S. after September 11," said Shenhar, noting that before the Gulf War, Israeli urban areas were generally spared. "This was a new situation for us, that we could be hit by surface-to-surface missiles, airplanes, terrorists. We understand we have to be better prepared."
In recent weeks, as the command has increased the tempo of its emergency drills, it has also revved up notices to the public to prepare emergency shelters, trade in old masks for new ones and brace for a possible attack.
As a result, the command has been pelted with almost daily newspaper headlines criticizing its orders and questioning its capabilities. This week, gas masks were the target, with local newspapers reporting that one-third of the masks distributed by the Home Front Command were ineffective.
"We've found our gas mask is one of the best gas masks in the world," said Shenhar. "We're always trying to improve them. We're in the middle of research and development of new masks."
During the recent drill in suburban Tel Aviv, members of a medical team fumbled with the straps of a stretcher carrying a female soldier playing the victim of a chemical missile attack just a few dozen yards from the simulated blast site. The tag on her wrist said she suffered from blisters all over her body.
One soldier took off his rubber gloves to better grasp the straps, another struggled to put on his gas mask, and a third had a wide gap between one leg of his protective suit and his boots.
"I'm dying," moaned the patient on the stretcher.
"Why aren't you working faster?" asked an observer watching the drill.
"This close to the blast, we'd all be dead anyway," replied one of the soldiers.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|