Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Israel, U.S. Developing Laser Cannon

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:09:01 -0500

Israel, U.S. Developing Laser Cannon
By MARK LAVIE
Associated Press Writer
October 30, 2003, 12:03 AM EST

TEL AVIV, Israel -- A joint U.S.-Israeli laser cannon can knock down
rockets in flight, but it will not be ready for battlefield use until at
least 2007, an official with the company developing the weapon said
Wednesday.

The system, called Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), uses an advanced
radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a laser beam to
destroy them.

Israel is interested in the THEL, called the Nautilus in an earlier
version, because of the threat from rockets on its border with Lebanon.
During an 18-year guerrilla war that ended in 2000, Syria and
Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrillas often fired small, unguided Katyusha
rockets at Israeli border towns.

Though there have been no such attacks since Israel withdrew from
southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israeli officials have said that Hezbollah
now has 11,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

Bob Bishop, media relations manager for Northrop-Grumman Corp., which is
developing the system, said it has passed tests at the White Sands, N.M.
facility since 2000. "It has shot down a number of Katyusha rockets and
artillery shells, too," he told The Associated Press in a telephone
interview from Los Angeles. The test at White Sands marked the first
time that a rocket has been destroyed in flight by a laser beam.
However, the test version of the system is stationary, and it could not
be deployed in the battlefield until it is made mobile. That could
happen in 2007, he said, if all the contracts are signed and production
continues.
The project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a
$56 million allocation, he said. It was passed by Congress and signed by
President Bush on Sept. 30.

Israel will also contribute funding, but Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the
Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and security committee, did not
know how much.

Congress also approved a further $89 million for a second joint
U.S.-Israeli project, the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, which has
already entered production, Steinitz said. The system is operational and
was deployed during the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq to guard Israel
against the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-israel-us-laser-weapon,0,6347092,print.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

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