by David Harris

    JERUSALEM, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States and Israel are scheduled to stage one of their largest joint military exercises this week as they test a series of defensive missile systems.

    It is the fifth time the nations have run the Juniper Cobra exercise and analysts say it points to the excellent strategic relationship between the militaries of the two countries, and to their attempts to counter what they see as the Iranian threat.

    CLOSE MILITARY TIES

    While Israel receives some 3 billion U.S. dollars a year in military aid from the United States, much of it goes back into procurement of defense systems made in America. The relationship is not merely strategic but has a knock-on effect on the economies of both countries.

    During the exercise in southern Israel the militaries will test the capabilities of the U.S. THAAD, Aegis and PAC-3 systems in addition to the jointly-funded Arrow defensive-missile system.

    "Israel and the U.S. see a strategic importance in their cooperation," said Uzi Rubin, who heads the Israeli company Rubincon Defense Consulting and formerly headed the country's Arrow project.

    Rubin sees the Arrow as a classic example of the benefits of collaboration.

    "This has been an outstanding success because it is a testimony to diplomatic cooperation and shows the gap was bridged between the different engineering cultures," Rubin told Xinhua.

    The Arrow is just one of a series of systems developed jointly by the allies. Other U.S.-made systems have been dispatched to Israel. Much of this effort is aimed at allaying fears concerning the perceived Iranian threat and to protect Israel from any attack launched by Tehran.

    NEW AND OLD SYSTEMS

    The Americans and Israelis are constantly developing new systems, according to Francis Tusa, editor of the London-based Defense Analysis newsletter. In addition to receiving U.S. missiles, Israel is constantly developing missiles of its own, he said.

    "Israel can get, for example, air-to-air missiles incredibly cheaply from the U.S., but they will still put money into developing their own versions, so they end up with a mixed fleet," said Tusa.

    Among Israel's recent acquisitions from Washington is a mobile radar system using X-band technology. The system, deployed in Israel a year ago, can detect missiles fired from anywhere up to 1,500 miles away.

    Should Iran ever fire a missile in Israel's direction, the Israeli military believes it will have some five minutes to defend the country. The radar system would buy Israel a few extra seconds of preparation time.

    That concern is behind much of the current technological cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, said Paul Beaver, an independent defense analyst from Britain. The two countries are focusing most of their efforts right now on trying to develop an advanced version of the Arrow that will be able to hit an incoming missile before it reaches its apogee, or point of no return.

    "Instead of the debris falling straight down, which would be over Jordan, Iraq or Saudi (in the case of an Iranian attack), it actually goes back where it came from and lands back on the site and is of course a great deterrent," said Beaver.

    Israel maintains that all its tests of the Arrow have been successful so far. That was until some three months ago, when it was reported that a test of the upgraded Arrow II in the Pacific Ocean was a failure because of interceptor problems.

    However, the fact that Israel and the U.S. work so closely together means such incidents can be and are addressed immediately.

    There are places though where Israel has decided to go it alone. According to Beaver, the U.S. cannot be seen to be developing strike missiles because of the Missile Technology Control Regime and so restricts its research and development of defensive programs, but Israel is thought to be developing its own arsenal and already has medium-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

    OTHER FACTORS

    While the diplomatic relationship between Israel and the U.S. has its highs and lows, that has never affected defense ties, said Rubin.

    "We never felt any problem whatsoever in the cooperative mechanisms concerning anti-missile defensive systems," he said, suggesting the same is true today when there is a pervading tension between the politicians in Washington and Jerusalem.

    That is not to say there are not issues that can affect the relationship. Sometimes, decisions at home also affect the relationship.

    A group of Israeli defense experts, all of them top level graduates from the Israel Defense Forces, has been lobbying for years in Israel for the purchase of the Skyguard or Nautilus defensive systems from the United States.

    However, until now Israeli Defense Ministry has always dismissed the experts' arguments.

    The group argues that the Skyguard, Northrop Gruman's tactical high-energy laser technology which was developed in the late 1990s,would be perfect for defending Israeli cities from attack. Israel had talked of purchasing and deploying this 10-km-range missile and radar system in the first couple of years of the new millennium.

    "There wasn't a problem with the United States, this was an internal Israeli issue," said Yosef Arazi, a member of the group and the vice president of Del-Ta Engineering Equipment

    Perhaps the 1.2-billion-USD price tag is a sufficient deterrent to persuade Israel not to order the system.

    However, Arazi freely admits that the U.S. and Israel jointly make decisions on purchases and research.

    "If you want to buy a plane or any other system it first goes through the Pentagon then you get a quote and negotiations begin," said Arazi.

    This cooperation has taken on many faces over the years dependent on the perceived threat at any given time. So, when the first Juniper Cobra was staged in 2001, the focus was potential incoming missiles from Iraq. American Patriot batteries were a focal point of the 15-day exercise and until today remain a central plank in Israel's defensive shield.

    The presumed threat in 2009 comes from Iran and this year's exercise will likely reflect that.

    Both Israel and the U.S. believe Iran presents a danger not only to the Jewish state but to the Arab world and Europe.

    While Israel continues to push the U.S. to act against Iran on the diplomatic front, both countries know that Tehran is continuing to develop its conventional arsenal and its payload-delivery methods with its Shihabs and other sophisticated missiles.

    As a result, the defensive partnership between the two is as strong now as it has always been and, according to experts like Rubin, will remain so in the foreseeable future.