A US radar may indicate renewed vows for the Defense Department and the Defense Ministry.
By YAAKOV KATZx-band radar 248 88(photo credit: Courtesy)
Relations between the Defense Ministry and the US Department of Defense have come a long way over the past four years. This was demonstrated by the arrival last week of a new, advanced long-range radar system in the Negev, as well as by the announcement this week of Pentagon plans to sell stealth fighters to the Israel Air Force.
In 2004, such news would have been unheard of. Then, the US decided to cut off all defense ties with Israel, after the Israel Aerospace Industries received a number of Harpy unmanned aerial vehicles it had sold to China a decade earlier for upgrades.
The US asked Israel to seize the UAVs and nullify the contract, claiming the drones contained US technology. Israel claimed the UAV was an indigenous design.
Despite the warm ties between the two countries, the US claimed it could no longer trust Israel with its technology, and as a result the Pentagon decided to freeze its status as a security cooperative participant in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program.
It took almost a year for Israel to regain its status in the program - and only after Amos Yaron, the director general of the Defense Ministry at the time, resigned and new strict defense export laws were instituted forbidding any sales to China.
The news this week of the deployment of the X-band radar in the Negev, and of Pentagon plans to supply up to 75 JSF fighters, appears to signify a new era in Israeli-US relations, though the lack of trust has yet to completely dissipate.
The radar, together with 120 servicemen, landed at Nevatim Air Force Base. Under US pressure, the Defense Ministry clamped a tight media blackout on the arrival, until it was leaked to Defense News by the US European Command.
THE HIGH-POWERED radar will be hooked up to the US military's Joint Tactical Ground Station. Assisted by satellites, it will be capable of detecting an Iranian ballistic missile shortly after launch, cutting the response time of the Arrow anti-missile system. The Arrow's current Green Pine radar can pick up incoming missiles at a range of 500 to 600 miles. The new system has a range of around 1,200 miles.
Interestingly, though the radar is being deployed here, the US decided - as was reported exclusively in The Jerusalem Post on Monday - not to allow IDF personnel to operate it.
The radar's arrival is not just meant to improve defense capabilities against Iran, defense officials noted this week. It is also America's way of bolstering its presence in the region in the face of a growing Russian presence in Syria.
Moscow is renovating the Syrian port of Tartus, which will be used to house a permanent Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean. President Bashar Assad visited Moscow last month, and told the Russian daily Kommersant that Damascus was "ready to cooperate with Russia in any way," including discussing deploying missile defense systems on Syrian territory.
"America has just as much interest in what is going on in the region as we do," a senior Israeli defense official explained. "Keep in mind that while we will receive the radar data, the Americans will be controlling the system and using it for their purposes, as well."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell made this quite clear in a briefing he gave in Washington on Tuesday.
"This is and will remain a US radar system," Morrell said. "So this is not something we are giving or selling to the Israelis."
In addition to bolstering the US presence in the region, the radar deployment is being viewed as a set of "golden handcuffs," meant to convey the message that while the Bush administration is willing to help Israel protect itself, it is opposed to an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear installations.
The IDF, defense officials stressed this week, never even asked for the radar, although it had expressed interest in its capabilities. What it had asked President George W. Bush for were offensive capabilities - such as bunker-buster bombs, F-22 stealth fighters and refueling tankers - requests that have all been rejected so far.
Tuesday's announcement that the Pentagon has notified Congress of its approval to sell the JSF to Israel is the first notification of the plane's sale outside the US and the other eight countries that are collaborating on its development. As a Security Cooperative Participant in the JSF program, Israel's right to buy the plane was guaranteed from the outset.
What remains to be seen is whether the Pentagon will give Israel the codes to the plane, and allow it to change its configuration and install locally-made systems. Six local defense companies are developing systems that could be installed on the plane - including internal bomb kits, conformal fuel tanks and electronic warfare systems.
The technology issue was discussed last week between the IAF and a visiting team of US military officers from the JSF program. It also was at the focus of talks Defense Ministry Director-General Pinhas Buchris held in Washington earlier this month. Talks are expected to continue before an official contract is signed between Israel and the US.
The main fear in Jerusalem is that Saudi Arabia or even Egypt will one day be sold the plane, thereby undermining Israel's military superiority. In the past year alone, the Pentagon approved more than $2 billion in sales to Saudi Arabia, including Apache helicopters and JDAM smart bombs.
Defense officials estimate that the timing of the announcement about the JSFs - on Rosh Hashana, a mere week after the arrival of the radar - was meant to create the appearance that the US was selling the plane to Israel counter Iran.
But Israel will only begin receiving the plane in 2014 - well after Military Intelligence predicts Iran will have a nuclear bomb.
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