An Israeli official this week confirmed the brand new Arrow-4 missile defense interceptor being developed by Israel and the U.S. goals to be cheaper to permit the next volume of units.
The Arrow-4 is about to exchange the Arrow-2 two-stage interceptor, which is geared to defend against short and medium-range ballistic missiles within the endo and exo-atmosphere realms. It uses an explosive-fragmentation warhead. The Arrow-2 was first deployed in 2000.
“One can ask, okay, why do you go ahead and begin with development of Arrow-4? It was a feasibility study that we conducted along with the Missile Defense Agency for nearly two years. We got here to the conclusion that we’d like to supply and to have a high volume of this layer, the endo-atmospheric layer,” Moshe Patel, director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO), said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event on May 30.
He added that after IMDO and MDA developed the Arrow-3 system with its newer capabilities they decided those capabilities can and must be adapted to Arrow-4.
Arrow-3 entered service in 2017 with a hit-to-kill warhead targeted at longer-range exo-atmospheric threats in space. Arrow-3 is currently the upper-most layer of Israel’s missile defense systems.
“The brand new interceptors shall be – I’m careful to say, but it’s going to be a bit of cheaper in comparison with Arrow-2 or Arrow 3. And it’s a sort of price objective development that we’re doing along with MDA,” Patel said.
The Israeli and U.S. governments first announced they’re developing the Arrow-4 in early 2021 to ultimately replace the Arrow-2 (Defense Every day, Feb. 18, 2021).
On the time, the countries said cooperative program work would proceed with primary contractor Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to defend against threats coming from each inside and outdoors the Earth’s atmosphere.
Patel noted Arrow-4 is being developed “initially, producing in high volumes and having higher capabilities within the endo-exo layer.”
He added IMDO together with MDA are monitoring Arrow-4 development almost daily to make sure it’s going to perform “in line with our price objectives and that it’s going to be performance that we would have liked.”
The U.S. government helps fund Israel’s missile defense programs they usually are under a memorandum of understanding that the DoD provides $500 million per 12 months in funding for Israel’s multi-layered air and missile defense, which continues within the Biden administration’s fiscal 12 months 2024 budget request.
Other Israeli air and missile defense programs the U.S. has helped fund and develop include the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow systems.
In 2019, the U.S. and Israel finished a flight test campaign of the Arrow-3 interceptor in Alaska to reveal its ability to conduct high altitude hit-to-kill engagement (Defense Every day, July 29, 2019).
