Israel will soon conduct a new test on its US-funded Arrow missile, Maariv newspaper said on Wednesday.
The anti-missile will be aimed at a ballistic missile, which is going to be launched from an F-15 fighter, the paper said.
High-ranking officials from the US Defense Department will witness the experiment, according to the report.
According to the official Kuwaiti news agency, KUNA, most of the previous missile tests failed.
But according to a Jane's Information Group report last year, an Arrow 2 anti-tactical ballistic missile (ATBM) achieved its first frontal interception of a target missile aimed at Israel on September 15.
Israeli defense officials were quoted in the report, one of the most authoritative sources on defense affairs, as saying that the Arrow 2 ATBM defense system successfully tracked and destroyed an incoming target missile fired at the Israeli coast from the Mediterranean.
The target missile was for the first time fired from a Boeing F-15 fighter rather than launched from the ground. It was programmed to simulate the profile of a 'Scud B' missile.
Israel was targeted by 39 Iraqi Scud missiles during the Gulf War in 1991.
Israeli officials said the target missile was tracked by the Green Pine Radar system, manufactured by Elta Electronics Industries, a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).
"By 2001, the system will be fully operational," IAI president Moshe Keret said at the time.
The Arrow is a joint US-Israeli project for which Washington provided some 65 percent of the $1.1 billion development funding spent by the time the experiment was conducted – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
