Israel’s Newest Deployment a World First, Will Make History Books

Unprecedented Turn in Gaza War

 By C. Douglas Golden, WESTERN  JOURNAL    November 18, 2023 at 9:06am

The left laughed when then-President Ronald Reagan made weapons in space a priority, derisively calling it “Star Wars.”They were even more derision when it came to former President Donald Trump’s Space Force, with an entire television series dedicated to mocking it.Perhaps, however, they won’t be laughing so hard now that Israel has made history by launching the first combat act that took place entirely in outer space.

According to Fox News, the Arrow 3 interceptor missile saw its first operational use on Nov. 9, the outlet reported on Friday.

The Arrow 3, jointly developed by the United States and Israel, is an exo-atmospheric defense system which can intercept ballistic missiles when they’re outside our atmosphere.e

In this case, the missile was fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen; the Times of Israel said the target was Eilat, the southernmost city in the Jewish state.

The eco-atmospheric interception happened over the Red Sea, the Israeli Defense Force said.

When the system was declared operational in 2017, Reuters called the Arrow 3 “a ‘Star Wars’-like extension of [Israel’s] capabilities to outer space where incoming missiles can be safely destroyed.”

However, while the Arrow 3 has been part of Israel’s shield against missiles and rockets for six years, the Nov. 9 encounter was the first time the missile saw combat usage.

Two other missiles have been shot down by the Arrow system in the past few weeks, but these interceptions — one of a rocket fired from Gaza, the other another Houthi-fired missile from Yemen — used the earlier iteration of the system, the Arrow 2, which does not leave the atmosphere.

On social media, there were reports of the launch being caught on a car’s camera:

“The Arrow system, produced by Israel Aerospace Industries, is the top tier of Israel’s multi-layered integrated air defenses, focused on incoming ballistic missiles,” Breaking Defense noted in a Nov.9 report.

“Arrow-3 is the most advanced variant currently in service; the Arrow-2 had its first successful intercept on Oct. 31. the Arrow 3 system was recently sold to Germany as Berlin sought a solution to threats in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine. Israel announced it was working on an Arrow 4 system to build on the success of Arrow 3 in 2021.”

Taking the war to outer space is a new frontier, to put it mildly. Less than 100 years ago, ballistic warfare was as advanced as lobbing artillery at the other side of the trenches. Now, we’ve come to the point where two sides can face each other in outer space.

Given that Israel is already on to the Arrow 4 and other countries have similar systems, acts of war will increasingly take place outside the atmosphere.

Especially as several conflicts threaten to metastasize and go global, other players aside from the United States and Israel will look to beef up their capability to deploy weapons outside the atmosphere.

No, “Star Wars” didn’t come to pass and Space Force has seen mostly modest progress since its inception, but looking toward the stars wasn’t wrong, either — as the IDF has proved in its fight against extremist aggressors.

November 19, 2023 | 9 Comments »

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  2. “Plenty of shows have landed glancing blows on the Trump administration, but TV has yet to crown its one true culture-representing Trump show. That’s a designation that Space Force, Netflix’s new 10-episode collaboration with The Office creator Greg Daniels, appears keen to claim for itself. The title and general countour of the premise originated with a March 2018 speech from the current commander-in-chief, in which his watery brain emitted the decree that America would achieve supremacy in the hotly contested region of outer space with the establishment of a brand new branch of the armed forces. So it had been declared, and so it was; by December 2019, space force was an independent entity and beginning our Starship Troopers-style conquest of the stars.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/02/space-force-netflix-trump-satire

  3. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States has quietly acknowledged that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard successfully put an imaging satellite into orbit this week in a launch that resembled others previously criticized by Washington as helping Tehran’s ballistic missile program.

    The U.S. military has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press since Iran announced the launch of the Noor-3 satellite on Wednesday, the latest successful launch by the Revolutionary Guard after Iran’s civilian space program faced a series of failed launches in recent years.

    Early Friday, however, data published by the website space-track.org listed a launch Wednesday by Iran that put the Noor-3 satellite into orbit. Information for the website is supplied by the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the U.S. Space Force, the newest arm of the American military.

    https://apnews.com/article/iran-satellite-launch-revolutionary-guard-07cee712fa0f726d54a6f69921e5d027

  4. Since we are so smart in outer space, why are we appeasing while the WAR is nowhere near over ? wtf are we doing ?

    Tzvi

  5. If Arrow missiles, based around Tel Aviv, shoot down 99% of 100 incoming nuclear missiles,Tel Aviv is still toast.