U.S. and Israel Reschedule Missile Defense Exercise to Autumn

Max Samis — February 6, 2012 – 3:58 pm | Barack Obama | Israel | Stop the Smears Comments (0) Add a comment

In a further demonstration of President Barack Obama’s steadfast support of Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported today that the United States and Israel will carry out the postponed Austere Challenge joint military exercise this fall. Yaakov Katz wrote:

Senior American military officers from the European Command are scheduled to arrive in Israel later this month to finalize plans to hold the exercise, which has been billed as the largest joint missile-defense exercise in the countries’ history.

The drill was initially scheduled for April and was supposed to see the deployment of thousands of US troops and various sophisticated American military equipment in Israel.

In December, however, Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked the Pentagon to consider the possibility of postponing the drill until later this year….

Israel and the US will use the drill to simulate missile-defense scenarios with the objective of creating a high level of interoperability so that, if needed, US missile-defense systems would be able to work with Israeli systems during a conflict.

This year’s drill is expected to be unique in its size and scope, and will also mark the first time that commander of the US European Command Adm.

James Stavridis will participate in the simulations. In the event of war, the EUCOM commander will be responsible for approving Israeli requests to deploy US missile-defense systems in Israel.

During recent GOP debates, multiple Republican presidential candidates—including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich—fabricated the story that the exercise had been cancelled by the U.S. In contrast, Katz’s article provides a concise summary regarding the exercise’s scheduling. Click here to read it. 

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