July 30, 2006 :: New York Times :: News
The New York Times recently profiled the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), a joint U.S.-Israeli development program that was canceled in September 2005. The project was conceived in the mid-1990s when Hezbollah guerrillas began firing Katyusha rockets at northern Israel. The contract was approved by the U.S. and Israel in April 1996, and work began at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The prototype THEL was roughly the size of six city buses, and included a chemical laser, fuel tanks, a rotating mirror, radar, and a command center. In 2000, the laser successfully destroyed an armed Katyusha in a test at White Sands, and soon thereafter shot down two dozen more. Despite these successes, the system was judged “too costly, feeble, and unwieldy for battlefield use,” according to the Times. The article quotes Yiftah S. Shapir, a military analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, who said that one Hezbollah guerrilla with a rocket launcher could fire 40 Katyushas in less than a minute, meaning that Israel would have had to deploy “a few dozen of these systems” at the Lebanese border. Firing THEL just once would have cost roughly $3,000, and if properly deployed the system would have likely run into the billions of dollars. David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, concurred with Shapir’s analysis. “The program was terminated because of its prohibitive costs,” he said.
All the same, Israel now has no defense against Katyusha rockets, and is paying the price in many ways. (Article)
» More stories on: Israel, Terrorism
» Missile system details for: Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), White Sands Missile Range
