Arrow-3 Ballistic Missiles Interceptor Continues Development

Arrow-3 Ballistic Missiles Interceptor Continues Development

ArrowDevelopment of the Arrow-3 ballistic missiles interceptor continues and the program has reached a number of very crucial milestones.

The Arrow weapon system consists of large, modern phase array radar, a battle management center and a two stage interceptor missile launched from a relatively simple multi barrel launcher. The missile is equipped with an infrared homing kill vehicle containing a powerful warhead that sends a focused beam of heavy fragments at the target. This large number of heavy tungsten fragments is sufficient to shred to pieces any type of hostile warhead, be it nuclear, chemical or explosive.

The Arrow 3 very high exo-atmospheric interception altitudes, coupled with the improved detection, discrimination and fire control is designed to permit observed fire (“Shoot – look – shoot” in air and missile defense parlance) thus providing at least two and possibly three chances to kill each incoming missile.  The new architecture will thus assure a very high probability of kill against any suspected nuclear missile, as well as being capable of handling larger salvoes of longer range ballistic missiles equipped with countermeasures – an Israeli “Star War” in miniature. Simply put, Israel has committed itself to fight it out if everything else fails.

The follow-on program was launched in 2008 with the goal of testing the Arrow 3 interceptor within three or four years (no definite timetable has been openly disclosed to date). In parallel, the US deployed to Israel one of its extremely capable TPY 2 radars on a semi permanent basis. A more powerful version of Israel’s indigenous Green Pine radar has been developed and tested, and the first tests of an airborne infra red optical detection system showed good promise. At the same time, the US increased its investments in the ground based SM3 system and advanced it’s deploy ability goal to 2015. It remains to be seen which of the two systems will win this race.