The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced on Monday the award of a “huge contract”, estimated at around 460 million francs, to several Israeli companies to accelerate the development of the Iron Beam anti-aircraft laser system.
This system, which will be added to other anti-aircraft defense means already used by Israel, should notably allow the army to intercept drones more effectively. These have been widely used by the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah against Israel for a year. And they have, on several occasions, managed to evade Israeli air defense, causing civilian and military casualties.
The ministry’s director general, Eyal Zamir, said in a statement that the laser air defense system should be “operational within a year.”
Main developer of Iron Beam, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is the Israeli authority, an emanation of the Ministry of Defense, responsible for the development of weapons and military technology. It is collaborating with the defense company Elbit on this laser system.
At the end of September, Israel announced that it had obtained a new package of American military aid worth 8.7 billion dollars (7.5 billion francs) “in support of Israel’s ongoing military effort”, in open war with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza.
The Ministry of Defense specified that almost two thirds of this amount had been allocated to improving existing anti-aircraft defense systems as well as an “advanced defense system using a very powerful laser beam”, which was in the final stages of its development.
According to the ministry, the Iron Beam system could even be installed on board a small civilian aircraft to target any flying object, such as “drones, shells, rockets, ballistic missiles.”
Israel has a multi-layered anti-aircraft and anti-missile umbrella, consisting of the Arrow and David’s Sling systems, specifically designed to intercept ballistic missiles, and the Iron Dome system, which intercepts shorter-range rockets and missiles.
