Israel has no intention of buying sophisticated anti-ballistic missiles from the United States, because they cost too much, a senior Israeli Defense Force officer said Wednesday.
His remark was at odds with a report last week in the Los Angeles Times that the United States had recently decided to sell Israel $200 million worth of specially designed Patriot air-defense missiles.
According to the Times, the American decision involves an emergency transfer of the Patriots and also the use of intelligence from U.S. early-warning satellites to activate those missiles.
In a news story from its Washington bureau, the Times cited opinions by Pentagon officials and defense analysts that the role of U.S. satellites in alerting the new anti-ballistic missiles would mark a deepening of the U.S.-Israel “strategic relationship” begun during the Reagan administration.
Additionally, the transfer would be the first time a superpower has introduced such a missile-defense shield into the Middle East military equation, the paper said.
But Israeli military experts here said that the Patriot is not cost-effective compared to other options.
One alternative is to wait for the development of the proposed Arrow anti-tactical ballistic missile, currently being researched jointly by the United States and Israel. The other chief option is to spend the $200 million on other defense needs that may be more acute than an Arab missile threat.
DEAL ‘NOT YET FINALIZED’
In Washington, a Capitol Hill source said some Israeli officials feel that while Israel faces a growing missile threat, the real danger is “farther down the road than immediate.”
The source said the Patriot’s chief advantage over the Arrow is that it could be deployed by the end of 1991, whereas the Arrow would take five to 10 years to deploy.
Through this fiscal year, the United States and Israel will have spent a combined $200 million on researching the Arrow, which is more sophisticated than the Patriot, the source said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney was asked Tuesday in Washington about any Patriot deal with Israel. He replied that the United States and Israel “have not yet finalized arrangements in this area.”
(Contributing to this report were JTA correspondents Howard Rosenberg in Washington and Tom Tugend in Los Angeles.)
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