The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee yesterday approved a record budget for US-Israeli missile defense programs for fiscal year 2012, which begins in October - $235.7 million. The funding is on top of the $205 million special grant for the procurement of more Iron Dome anti-missile batteries announced by President Barack Obama and already appropriated by Congress, and it is in addition to the $3 billion in annual US military aid.
US aid for joint missile defense programs with Israel totaled $217.7 million for fiscal year 2011.
The proposed aid package will fund jointly developed missile defense programs - Arrow 2, Arrow 3, and David’s Sling - which are partly funded by the US Department of Defense.
The House Appropriations Committee still has to approve the proposed appropriation, followed by the House of Representatives. The Senate is undergoing a parallel appropriations legislative process, after which the two houses will have to settle differences between their versions and send the final appropriations bill to the president for signing.
The amount of funding that Israel will finally receive for the missile defense programs is therefore still unknown, assuming that Congress passes a federal budget for 2012 at all. The 2011 budget has not yet been approved.
Despite US budget woes and the federal deficit, and the worsening confrontation between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as the tensions between the Obama administration and the Israeli government, Israel's friends in Washington view the subcommittee vote as an achievement, as it won bipartisan support in the subcommittee.
Committee member Representative Steve Rothman (Democrat-New Jersey) said, "Given America’s significant budget challenges, every single dollar we are expending on behalf of the US taxpayer must be given the highest level of scrutiny, including funds appropriated toward the defense of the United States and its allies. It is a mark of the importance of these jointly developed missile defense programs - Arrow 2, Arrow 3, and David’s Sling - that they were all robustly funded by our subcommittee."
$110.5 million of the appropriation approved by the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee is for short range ballistic missile defense. A source on Capitol Hill told "Globes" that this funding is for David's Sling, also known in Israel as Magic Wand. $15 million of the appropriation is for production of the system in Israel and the US in order to meet Israel's defense needs. David's Sling is being developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. and Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), which aims to intercept missiles with ranges of 70-250 kilometers. Hizbullah has such missiles.
$66.2 million is for the Arrow 3 anti-missile system, which aims to intercept intermediate range ballistic missiles above the atmosphere, and $59 million is for upgrading the Arrow 2 system.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 2, 2011
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