sraeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has finally prevailed upon his own military bureaucrats in the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv to buy Raytheon's excellent Vulcan Phalanx super-fast heavy machine gun and guidance system as a defense system against very-short-range ballistic missiles.
Barak told the respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz April 20 that he had finally taken the plunge to buy the Vulcan Phalanx system, a mature technology effective up to 4 miles in range that has operated superbly well for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, for the Israel Defense Forces. It is expected to be deployed to guard Sderot and other Israeli communities in northwestern Negev that have been under bombardment for years from Gaza.
Israeli press reports have presented Barak as the hero who wanted to buy the Vulcan Phalanx before but was stymied by his own bureaucracy, but there appears to be a large element of spin control in those reports. |