17 Planes Airlift Anti-missile Radar for Installation Near Beersheba, Israel
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Seventeen huge US Air Force C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III transports have ferried the high-powered FBX-T anti-missile radar to Israel’s Nevatim Air Base south of Beersheba it was announced Saturday, September 27, 2008. Military sources report that the transportable radar surveillance/forward-based X-band radar was accompanied by some 120 American European Command personnel. The area of its deployment at the Negev base has been fenced off and made off-limits to non-American personnel.
The radars can detect, track and provide command and control for anti-missile interceptors with a very high probability of destroying the missiles before they strike their targets. The systems are said to already be operating. Or soon will be.
In 2006 an earlier version of the system was installed in Japan and has operated there since. Fixed site radars are cited in Greenland, Massachusetts and Florida and interceptors are also sited in Alaska and California, and seaborne versions are operated in the Pacific from an Alaskan base. It is this system of radars and interceptors that Poland and the Czech Republic have agreed to emplace systems to the chagrin of Russia.
Beersheba (Hebrew: בְּאֵר שֶׁבַע, Be’er Sheva, Arabic: بئر السبع, is located on the northern edge of the Negev desert 115 kilometres (71 mi) south-east of Tel Aviv and 120 kilometres (75 mi) south-west of Jerusalem. Obviously it is remotely cited because it is a strategic target that would likely be attacked in any missile exchange.
Beersheba is an ancient site, occupied sine the 4th millennium BC it is mentioned in the Book of Genesis in connection with Abraham the Patriarch and his pact with Abimelech. Isaac built an altar in Beersheba (Genesis 26:23-33). Jacob had his dream about a stairway to heaven in the area of Beersheba. (Genesis 28:10-15 and 46:1-7). The prophet Elijah took refuge in Beersheba when Jezebel ordered him killed (I Kings 19:3).
In contemporary history it is famous on October 31, 1917, when 800 soldiers of the Australian 4th and Light Horse Brigade charged the Turkish trenches, overran them on horseback with sabers and captured the wells of Beersheba. It was the last successful cavalry charge in British military history. In 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence it was the site of a fierce battle when Egy[tian forces were surrounded and forced to surrender. Now it is the site of the spearpoint of Israel’s defense against missile attack.