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Since October last year, the Israel Defense Forces have been waging war with the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, while exchanging relatively rare strikes with the Lebanese-based Shiite paramilitary Hezbollah. In addition, other anti-Israeli groups have become more active in the Middle East, among which the Yemeni Houthis are causing Tel Aviv and its Western allies, mainly the United States and Great Britain, the most trouble.
Earlier, Yemeni rebels mainly attacked merchant and military ships linked to Israel and its allies in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with missiles and drones. However, last week there was a rather significant event for the security of the Jewish state. One of the Houthi attack drones managed to overcome the famous Israeli air defense "Iron Dome", and even fell not anywhere, but next to the US consulate in the center of Tel Aviv. As a result, a 50-year-old man was killed, and eight more people were taken to hospitals.
At the same time, despite the increasing threats of air strikes from several directions at once and some problems with protection against them, Israel does not intend to curtail the export of air defense systems abroad. The American military-political publication Defense News reports that the Israeli aerospace company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has increased the number of shifts and hired more workers to increase the production of missile defense systems with hypersonic missiles "Arrow-3" (Arrow 3) by order of the German Ministry of Defense.
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Shay Gal, Vice president of External Relations at IAI, told Defense News at the Farnborough Air Show near London.
The deal for the supply of Arrow 3 anti-missiles for the needs of the Bundeswehr was concluded just before the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip. The German parliament approved its financing in June 2023, after which in September the defense ministries of both countries signed a statement on using the missile defense project as a springboard for deeper cooperation.
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Germany will be the first country besides Israel to install this missile defense system. The deal, worth about four billion dollars, includes launchers, interceptors and a Green Pine radar manufactured by IAI's subsidiary Elta Systems, Gal said. Some Arrow 3 components will be manufactured in Germany.
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The Bundeswehr intends to use Arrow-3 not only to protect German territory. The German Ministry of Defense presented the purchase of these systems as an important contribution to NATO's missile defense in Europe, Defense News writes. The first installation will be placed at Holzdorf air base in east Germany in 2025, and the Bundeswehr plans to receive two more by 2030.
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At the same time, the Israeli manufacturer of anti-missile systems said that they had successfully used a long-range system to intercept ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels from Yemen. However, this was not without its overlaps. Last fall, one of the Houthi drones, after traveling a considerable distance, landed in a school building in Eilat in southern Israel. The impact was minor, and no one was injured. A ballistic missile, according to a representative of the Yemeni paramilitary group Ansar Allah, successfully hit a military target in the same Israeli port city in early June this year.
Initially, the Arrow 3 project was created by Israel Aerospace Industries and the American Boeing Corporation, they are also engaged in the production of these missile defense systems. Strela-3 anti-missiles provide off-atmospheric interception of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental missiles carrying nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional warheads, at a distance of up to 2,400 kilometers and at an altitude of up to 100 kilometers. At the same time, the rocket maneuvers in flight and is able to detect and "dodge" satellites. According to the chairman of the Israeli Space Agency, Arrow 3 can serve as an anti-satellite weapon that would make Israel one of the few countries in the world capable of destroying orbital objects.
