A Channel 2 TV report in 2012 said
the defense systems cost $1 million per plane and would first be installed on
airlines, including the national carrier El Al, flying what are defined as “sensitive
routes”.
The
system integrates laser technology with a thermal camera to protect aircraft
against missiles fired from the ground. It deflects missiles fired at aircraft
by changing their direction.
Israel’s Defense Ministry said it has
successfully completed final testing on a system that protects commercial
planes from missile attacks.
Eitan Eshel,
head of research and development at the ministry, said recently that testing of
the “Sky Shield” system was “100 percent successful."
The
tests involved firing live missiles, which were all successfully deflected. Eitan said, but did not say when the
system, under development for about a decade, would become operational.
Recently,
Israel’s Channel 2 news reported that threat to civilian airliners worldwide
was on the rise, and that European authorities had thwarted eight efforts to
launch shoulder-fired missiles at airplanes in the past year alone.
It
should be recalled that Islamic terrorists fired two surface-to-air missiles at
an Israeli charter plane not long after takeoff in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2002. The
missiles missed their target but spurred Israeli efforts to improve
countermeasures.
From Google Search
Reports
of tests in the past two years have noted that the “Sky Shield” system proved
capable of deflecting single and multiple missiles away from the target plane.
Also,
the need for the system was deemed particularly acute because of ongoing
tension between Israel and Iran, which funds and arms Islamists to Israel’s
south in Gaza, and Hezbollah to the country’s north, in Lebanon.
Culled
from The Times of Israel and
re-written by us.
