U.S. Makes, Israel Takes: The Real Story of U.S.-Israeli Military Cooperation

from Drop Site News 

When Israel deployed its Iron Beam laser weapon for the first time last December, the announcement by leading Israeli defense firms Rafael and Elbit Systems was met with fawning coverage worldwide. The futuristic laser system, designed to shoot drones and rockets out of the sky, was celebrated as a demonstration of the Israeli weapons industry’s technological sophistication.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense described Iron Beam as “Israel’s first domestically developed laser interception system,” while touting the country as a pioneer in missile defense. The Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, another key example of Israel’s purportedly homegrown ingenuity, was heavily employed to defend from Iranian missile attacks during two recent wars.

That alleged ingenuity is at the center of a debate roiling Washington this month as Congress returns to debates about whether to create a new office in the Pentagon to coordinate U.S. and Israeli military research, testing, and industrial production, giving institutional architecture to a relationship that is already deeply intertwined on a de facto basis. The legislation, known as Section 219, was included in the House-passed National Defense Authorization Act, but remains contested in the Senate. Backers of the bill argue that tighter coordination with Israel should not be seen as a giveaway or cost to the United States, but rather is a boon to U.S. military capacity because the U.S. benefits more from the partnership than Israel. Arrow and Iron Beam are routinely held up as case studies of such innovation.

But the real story of how these weapons were developed is quite different. In fact, both weapons systems were developed and financed by the United States before being handed off to Israel by acts of Congress, according to government documents and interviews with key personnel involved in their development—despite warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies that transferring the tech to Israel effectively hands it over to U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia.

The pattern has long been cause for concern inside the intelligence community and among some in the Pentagon, but the mandates have come directly from Congress.

David Pyne, who worked as a civilian in the Pentagon office that oversaw development of the Arrow 2 program in the early 2000s, said it still bothered him that the American military put in so much work, and American taxpayers footed the bill, yet the U.S. couldn’t even fully benefit from the system. “They didn’t contribute a dime into the program, but the thing that pissed me off at the time, and obviously since, is that they would not share the final product,” said Pyne in relation to Israeli participation in the program...

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