Israel Assembles Advanced Missile Defense Systems

Source: Washington Post

ASHKELON, Israel -- As Israel pushes for international action against Iran's nuclear program, it is steadily assembling one of the world's most advanced missile defense systems, a multilayered collection of weapons meant to guard against everything from the shorter-range Grads that have been used to strike Israeli towns such as this one to intercontinental rockets.

The effort, partly financed by the United States and incorporating advanced U.S. radar and other technology, has been progressing quietly for two decades but now has reached a level of maturity that Israeli defense and other analysts say could begin changing strategic decisions in the region. Centered on the already-deployed Arrow 2 antimissile system, it is being extended to include a longer-range Arrow 3, the David's Sling rocket designed to hit lower- and slower-flying cruise missiles, and the Iron Dome system intended to destroy Grads, Katyushas, Qassams and other shorter-range projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.

.....

The Obama administration this week decided to scrap a Bush-era plan to deploy a longer-range antimissile system in the Czech Republic and Poland, and said it would move toward a more intermediate system that better matches its assessment of what Iran can do.

In Israel, the issue is considered one of the country's highest foreign-policy priorities. There have been varying Israeli assessments about Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon: Although the head of the Mossad intelligence agency told a Knesset committee this summer that Iran may be five years away from acquiring a bomb, the head of military intelligence has said it could happen by the end of the year. But Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu takes it as an imminent threat.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091801787.html

at a future date they'd more likely drive it there in a car.

...Someone will find a way to circumvent it.

There's no better example then the Maginot Line. The French spend 30 Billion francs during the great depression to build it, and connect it to the Belgium network of forts. The Germans devised a strategy that forced the surrender of one Belgium fort, and just avoided the rest while conquering Belgium and France.

Car, van, pickup, fishing boat