Defense Ministry Nixes Missile Test for the Second Time in a Month

Jerusalem, 10 January, 2018 (TPS) -- For the second time since the beginning of December, the Defense Ministry cancelled a test of the Arrow 3 anti-missile system Wednesday following a system malfunction.

“The incident has no effect on the operational Arrow 2 Missile system, which has been employed by air force defense units for years,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The trial had been planned as part of the top-level of Israel’s multi-layered defense plan. The Arrow program, which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles while they are still outside the Earth’s atmosphere, has been a joint US-Israel project since 1988, with Seattle-based Boeing and Israel Aircraft Industries working jointly to develop the Arrow 3 since 2012. According to the conservative National Interest foreign policy journal, Washington has spent $743 million on Arrow 3 funding since 2008.

In June, National Interest reported that Israel defense officials, together with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), were planning to test the Arrow 3 near Kodiak, Alaska in 2018, explaining that Israel is too small to test the system locally.