Selling arrows to the Indians

Now that the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is dead and buried, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are free to confront

we did manage to intercept almost all the slow-moving Scuds in their terminal dives. But what about next time? What if Saddam has faster missiles?

Is this just speculation on the author's part? To make them faster he'd have to add another stage, or lengthen the rocket to increase fuel capacity, either of which would require a lot of observable testing. This was already done to the Scud several times, not always with success.

(Though I think he really means 'any future enemy' when he refers to Saddam in this sentence.)

Fortunately, the U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty didn't prohibit our upgrading the Patriot for use by the Israelis. So, after the Gulf War, we instituted a cooperative program that resulted in the Arrow ABM system the Israelis now want to sell India

This author missed the boat in a couple of areas. For example the Patriot has been upgraded, with software, but it still is a sub sonic missile. The arrow however is an entirely new system that is hypersonic, has three times the range and is capabible of linking its C&C system with Patriot batteries to upgrade their capability with its superior radar.

The arrow is so good that we are buying it from the Israeli's to guard select cities in the US.

The UAV system is also joint developed, but Israel has not implemented it. The US has not implemented the THEL ground based Laser anti-missile system that we Joint developed with Israel.

One nice thing about the Israeli's as partners, the are no dummies and they tend to pull their own weight better than any other joint tech project we have with any other ally.

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