JERUSALEM, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Arrow missile defense system is capable of protecting the Israeli territory from an Iranian missile barrage, a former Defense Ministry rocket expert told Xinhua on Wednesday.
"I can say it with assurance: we built those abilities into the Arrow warhead," Uzi Rubin, the Arrow's chief developer and head of Israel's Homa (Barrier) Missile Defense Agency between 1991 and 1999, when the first version of the missile was deployed.
"The Arrow missile defense system -- not the single Arrow missile, the system -- was developed to deal with missiles coming from distances of more than 1,000 kilometers," he said, adding that the system "can handle multiple missiles in parallel."
"There is no such thing as 100 percent defense, but the Arrow is capable of providing an adequate defense against Iran's Shahab and Sajil ballistic missiles," said Arieh Herzog, who until recently served as director of the Defense Ministry's Homa Missile Defense Authority.
Iran has invested considerable efforts in recent years in upgrading its ballistic missiles. Aside from the Shahab and Sajil, both of which have ranges of more than 2,000 km, Tehran is believed to be developing cruise missiles, Herzog said, according to The Jerusalem Post.
The remarks came amid a flurry of media reports in recent months that Israel is steadily gearing to launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, with top U.S. defense officials increasingly concerned that they will not be warned before the strike.
Israeli military planners predicate that such a strike would be more than likely to prompt Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and possibly Syria to retaliate with massive missile fire against Israel's strategic installations and urban centers.
Rubin also believes that rockets from Syria posed a more immediate threat than those from Iran -- 1,200 kilometers away at its closest point to Israel -- due to the former's proximity to Israel's northern border.
Herzog said that the Arrow, a system designed to intercept ballistic missiles high in the stratosphere, is slated to "play a critical role" in minimizing the damage by Iran's Shahabs and Syria's advanced Scuds.
The system, whose development was underwritten by the United States, became operational in the Israel Air Force (IAF) in the early 1990s and has since underwent dramatic improvements.
The IAF currently deploys an undisclosed number of Arrow 2 missile batteries. Arrow 3, a system that will comprise the upper tier of Israel's missile defenses, is still under development and scheduled to become operational in 2015.
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