Arrow anti-missile system on high alert (Day in the life of Missle Crew..)
The face of the air defense commander, Brigadier General Yair Dori, paled in seconds. Dori was about to complete a routine briefing to journalists visiting an Arrow anti-missile system battery at Palmachim on Thursday. In the absence of any other action, the journalists had jumped at the opportunity to take some photographs of the system poised to defend against a threat from the east.
About a minute before completing the briefing, a siren began to wail. Lieutenant Colonel Shachar, commander of the battery, a stocky man sitting at the left edge of the briefing room, catapulted out of his seat with surprising speed. A look at Dori's face made it urgently clear that this was no exercise.
After a brief pause, Dori muttered: "This is real," and rushed to the control center nearby. The journalists took another minute to realize what was going on. Suddenly the feeling was that after so much talk of "the slightest of chances" for a missile attack against Israel - here we were. It turns out that the first call you make is home, not to the newsroom.
Very quickly the room filled with dozens of soldiers wearing their gas masks. Most of the journalists apparently had left theirs in their cars, parked outside the base. The journalists who managed to sneak out of the room, despite the efforts of the IDF spokesman and the security personnel, could see soldiers and officers rushing back and forth to the command center.
The siren stopped but the state of emergency was not lifted for more than 10 minutes. The response of air defense commander, when he returned to meet the journalists, suggested that he had learned something about the media in the past months. "This was a false alarm," he said. "But what you saw - the way the battery prepares for an interception in a very short period of time - reflects the seriousness and professionalism of the people here."
The real cause of the false alarm, just when the surprised journalists were present, is still being investigated. However, Dori pointed out that this is a very rare occurrence. In fact it is a first. It happened, he suggested, because for the first time, the system is linked to so many different elements: satellites; the U.S. shipborne Aegis radar system; Green Pine, the Arrow's own radar; the U.S. Patriot missile batteries; and the Israeli ones. Later, part of the confusion was clarified.
One of the Aegis systems on a U.S. ship off the coast of Israel identified what it thought was a missile launch - from the west. Despite the unexpected direction, the missile launch symbol appeared on the computer screens of the Arrow system. Only when no other signals supported the indication that a missile had been fired )and by then the maximum flight time had already passed without a report of any missile landing(, the state of alarm was lifted.
On the whole, it was clear that the air defense command was very pleased to have had the opportunity to show off their high level of professionalism, developed around the sophisticated Arrow system in recent years. It was also evident that a great deal of effort is being put into cooperation with the Americans.
The man in charge of the American air defense effort in Israel is Major General Stanley Green, commander of the U.S. Army air defense artillery center. Green holds daily meetings with Dori, coordinating the joint "battle clock" the two armies are following and jointly touring the sites where the air defense missile batteries are located.
All Israeli and American Patriot air defense missile batteries have already been deployed in the Haifa, Tel Aviv and Dimona areas. One additional missile battery, from Germany, has not yet been deployed; this will be done only if it becomes necessary.
Dori said that last week Israel received a shipment of improved Patriot missiles, the PAC-2 GEM, whose capabilities are much enhanced. Dori says that the public can "be sure that we are able to intercept ground-to-ground missiles, but it should be remembered that these systems will never provide a 100-percent guarantee.
