Report: Pentagon seeks $220mln for Israel’s Iron Dome

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency for the first time in its regular annual budget contains funds to buy additional Iron Dome missile defense systems for Israel, according to documents and an agency spokesman, Bloomberg reported.

The budget requests $220 million for missile batteries in fiscal 2014, which begins Oct. 1, and an additional $175.9 million in fiscal 2015, according to budget documents the Missile Defense Agency posted online.

The money, if approved during the annual defense budget process, would be on top of $486 million the White House and Congress have requested or added for the system in recent years after formal budgets were submitted. This includes $211 million added in the defense appropriations bill for this year, which U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law last month.

The $220 million request for fiscal 2014 “is new money, and it is the first time funding specifically for Iron Dome procurement has been requested in our budget submission,” Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner said in an e- mail.

House and Senate defense committees last year signaled they wanted to approve spending as much as $680 million on Iron Dome through 2015.

The fiscal 2014 request “is a smaller piece of the larger amount and supports the various production lines and schedules to meet the desired goals,” Lehner said.

Israeli and U.S. officials last year said the Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted about 400 rockets fired at Israel, or about 85 percent of those targeted by its radar and battle-management system as heading toward populated areas, during eight days of bloodshed between Israel and Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip.

Iron Dome, made in Israel by Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., is designed to intercept and destroy rockets capable of flying as far as 70 kilometers (44 miles). Israel has fielded its first five batteries of launchers and interceptors costing as much as $90,000 apiece, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.