Military toy roundup 10/28/06

Israel developing rocket interceptor

TEL AVIV — Israel has started developing a system to intercept short-range missiles and rockets.

The Israeli military is beginning fast-track development of a short-range rocket defense system. The state-owned Israel Military Industries has been working on the Magic Shield system, based on the Accurate Light Artillery Rocket. Executives said IMI would to use the 160-mm rocket as an interceptor for enemy rockets with a range of nine to 200 kilometers.

"It will detonated near the incoming rocket and neutralize it," IMI said.

During the 34-day war that ended on Aug. 14, Hizbullah fired 4,200 rockets into Israel from neighboring Lebanon.

IMI presented Magic Shield at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting, which ended on Oct. 11. Executives said the company is seeking a U.S. partner for development and marketing.

"The plan is that the system would take two years to develop and another year of trials," an executive said. "We're hoping that both Israel and the United States would consider procurement."

Under the concept, radars and other sensors track the launch of an enemy short-range missile and rocket. The Magic Shield's command and control system would determine the optimal point of interception.

At that point, the interceptor would be fired toward the incoming projectile. The 160-mm AccuLAR rocket, equipped with a trajectory correction system, would be guided by operators toward its target. In an effort to save cost, the rocket would not be equipped with radar.

Executives said the IMI-designed interceptor could also target enemy launchers. IMI has already developed an enhanced guided artillery rocket system for the U.S.-origin Multiple Launch Rocket System.

Executives said the Magic Shield concept has been presented to Israel's Defense Ministry, which has been ordered to find a solution to rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. The ministry has also been considering a laser-based solution to the short-range rocket threat.

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Israel Developing “Magen Kassum” Rocket Interceptor

October 7, 2006 :: Jane’s Information Group :: News

Israel Military Industries (IMI) is developing a new defense system against short- and long-range rockets, reports the October 11 edition of Jane’s Defence Weekly. The new system, dubbed Magen Kassum (Magic Shield), will consist of a “light rocket” that, unlike other missile defense systems, will carry no homing device or radar. According to an IMI spokesman, “after receiving data from a variety of available sensors, the rocket will be launched to an optimal interception point against the incoming threat … and will be detonated in proximity to the incoming rocket.” Based on the 160 mm Accurate Light Artillery Rocket (AccuLAR), the Magen Kassum is designed to deal with a broad range of rocket threats, from the Palestinian Qassam, with a range from 9 km, to the Iranian Zelzal, with a range of 200 km. The concept has been presented to Israel’s Ministry of Defence, which is seeking solutions to the growing threat of rockets from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

U.S. hails airborne laser as weapons milestone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency on Friday hailed what he described as epochal progress toward putting a high-energy laser aboard a modified Boeing Co. 747 to zap ballistic missiles that could be fired by North Korea and Iran.

But the Pentagon's former top weapons tester cast doubt on project, calling it far from militarily effective and perhaps easily defeated by a simple countermeasure.

The so-called Airborne Laser has been developed at a cost so far of about $3.5 billion with the aim of destroying, at the speed of light, all classes of ballistic missiles shortly after their launch. If successful in flight testing and deployed, it would become part of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield that also includes land- and sea-based interceptor missiles.

"You've demonstrated capability on the ground," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said at a ceremony at which the aircraft was rolled out of a Wichita, Kansas, hangar where it has been undergoing modifications.

"Not since that time nearly twenty-two hundred years ago, when Archimedes reflected the sun's rays to set the Roman fleet on fire off Syracuse, has the world seen a weapon that puts fresh meaning into the phrase 'in real time'."

"Let's do it now in flight," Obering told employees of Boeing, the prime contractor, and chief subcontractors Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. at the event.

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton and now at the private Center for Defense Information, said in an e-mail reply to Reuters that its real effectiveness appeared doubtful.

"If a laser can be developed with enough power to penetrate the atmosphere and still be lethal once it reaches a target, an enemy would only need to put a reflective coating on the outside of its missiles to bounce off the laser beam, making it harmless," he said
"The Romans could have done the same thing in the myth about Archimedes. Any grade schooler knows that you can set a dry leaf on fire with a magnifying glass. The challenge is to achieve militarily effective damage," he added.

Neither Boeing nor the Missile Defense Agency responded immediately to an offer to rebut Coyle's comments.

PENTAGON SEES BIG POTENTIAL

Engineers are to start installing a high-energy chemical oxygen iodine laser on the modified jumbo jet next year, with the first missile intercept test to take place in late 2008.

Pat Shanahan, vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, said engineers had demonstrated "enormous progress toward ushering in a new age of technology, namely directed energy weapons."

Obering said the technology had the potential to change the nature of warfare.

"The news from North Korea and Iran has been consistently bleak," he said, referring to programs to "arm ballistic missiles of increasingly long range with lethal payloads."

In Wichita, engineers fully integrated the Lockheed-designed systems that control the beam and firing mechanisms in the aircraft, a modified 747-400F, Boeing said.

"The program achieved most of the objectives of the ground tests and expects to satisfy the remaining ones in the coming months," the company said in a statement.

Coyle said Boeing had omitted the "basic scientific and technical limitations that stand in the way of achieving an effective system."

Northrop Grumman supplies both the high-energy laser and a beacon illuminator laser used to measure atmospheric turbulence that it would encounter on its path to the target.