Breaking Defense:
AUSA: The Army doesn’t want to buy any more Iron Dome air defense systems, but if it may have to buy more of the Israeli-made system if it can’t get its own program up and running by 2023.
The purchase of the Israeli system this summer was meant to fill a gap the Army has in defeating shorter-range missiles, but Congress imposed a 2023 deadline in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act for the American service to develop its own system or it would have to buy more Iron Domes.
The purchase was made, “because we had nothing else out there,” Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson, Air and Missile Defense Cross Functional Team director told reporters today. “We needed some immediate capability above the tactical level.”
