Office of Senator Marco Rubio:

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Mike Rounds (R-SD) sent a letter to Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, regarding efforts to fully fund U.S.-Israel cooperative missile defense programs in the Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2023. The senators called for $500 million to fund Israel’s missile defense system, which is made up of four operational layers: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow 2, and now Arrow 3. In addition to contributing to ballistic missile defense, the funding will support crucial work on research, development, and test activities to ensure our most important ally in the Middle East has the capabilities to defend itself against increasingly hostile unmanned aerial systems.

“Joint U.S.-Israel collaboration on Israel’s multilayer missile defense system is instrumental to the defense of Israel,” the senators wrote. “Since 1986, Congress and successive administrations have demonstrated bipartisan support for joint U.S.-Israel missile defense collaboration. This partnership has helped build and maintain a multi-tiered Israeli missile defense system capable of countering a wide range of threats from state and non-state actors…”

Click here to read the full press release