Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) wants to promote Israel’s missile capability in 2018, Ma’ariv reported Sunday, suggesting the reason for the proposed shift in policy is twofold: reducing risk to Air Force warplanes, and reducing costs.
In recent years, foreign media have repeatedly claimed that the IAF frequently attacks strategic targets in Syria – most often in an effort to prevent Syrian government arms and ammunition from being smuggled into Lebanon by Hezbollah. Each one of these sorties is an expensive, complicated and dangerous operation.
Liberman describes the current state of affairs regarding those attacks as follows: warplanes take off, fly low, then rise to a tremendous height, and vice versa. They maneuver, and then go down again, evading several radar systems in the way, of friends and foes alike, navigating at night, carrying out the mission, and flying back home using the same complicated procedure, and, meanwhile, a vast IDF and Air Force system is following them, prepared to launch immediate rescue operations should those bee needed, and everyone has a headache two days before and three days after.
“Why do we need all that?” Liberman asks, noting that “Israel possesses an extensive missile technology, one of the best in the world. Israel even sells precision missiles to many countries. The time has come for us to benefit from it, too.”
“The target that was bombed in the middle of the night near Damascus could have also been destroyed by a missile launched quietly,” he argues, “Without any harm and without taking the risks and the complications of an air strike. Israel needs the planes and pilots for more complex missions. We don’t have to use them on a daily basis for missions that even a missile can also perform, quietly and with the same efficiency.”
To that end, last Thursday, under Liberman’s instructions, the Defense Ministry issued the first financing package, to the tune of $146 million, for the purchase of missiles such as the Long Range Attack (LORA), manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries, with a range of 250 miles and warheads weighing between 30 and 1,650 lbs.
The LORA will easily address Israel’s needs regarding countries and territories in its first circle of concern, including everything that needs to be attacked in Syria, Lebanon, or even the Gaza Strip.
Minister Liberman is adamant that, in the next few years, Israel must equip itself with a comprehensive arsenal of attack rockets in order to release the Air Force to more important matters and simplify the military system.