U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret

McClatchy – by Sheera Frenkel

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s military fumed Monday over the discovery that the U.S. government had revealed details of a top-secret Israeli military installation in published bid requests.

The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.  

“If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility,” said an Israeli military official who commented on the publication of the proposal but declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the facility. He declined to say whether plans for the facility have been altered as a result of the disclosure.

“This is more than worrying, it is shocking,” he said.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the Arrow 3 base, but he said the United States routinely published the details of its construction plans on a federal business opportunities website so that contractors could estimate the costs of jobs. He said such postings often might be revised after contracts were approved.

Israeli officials appear to have been well aware of the danger of outsourcing building projects to the United States. In an interview with the Reuters news agency in March, Lt. Col. Peleg Zeevi, the head of the bidding process at Israel’s Defense Ministry, justified Israel’s long history of relying on the United States to help build military installations by saying that Israel needed “a player that has the knowledge, ability and experience.”

“We are aware of the security issues that arise in deals with foreign firms, but because we want real competition and expertise, we will create conditions that will allow and encourage their participation,” Zeevi said.

It appears, however, that Israeli officials were caught by surprise that details of the facility at Tel Shahar, classified so top secret that Israel’s military won’t officially confirm its location between Jerusalem and Ashdod, would be made so public.

Jane’s Defence Weekly first wrote about the bidding documents, citing them in a story in which it recounted details of the Arrow 3, a defense system designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere that’s expected to become operational in 2015.

According to the bid requests, the Arrow 3 system will include six interceptors in vertical launch positions to be placed in the facility, and a gantry crane would need to be erected for further missiles. The structures encasing the interceptor system are to be constructed from high-grade concrete reinforced with steel mesh grids. They’ll have steel blast doors and a system to protect electrical wiring from the pressure created by a launch.

Israeli officials had announced that they were fast-tracking the Arrow 3 system because of their fear that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

“We want to reach a situation in which Israel has a ready defense for any threat, present or future,” said Col. Aviram Hasson, the head of the Defense Ministry department that’s charged with developing the system.

The Arrow 3 is capable of intercepting missiles at a range of up to 1,500 miles and can maneuver in midair to chase them. Last February, Israel conducted the first test of the Arrow 3 in space. That test was overseen by the United States.

The new facility won’t be the first military installation the U.S. government has built in Israel. Since 1998, when Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the Wye River memorandum, the U.S. has constructed about $500 million in military facilities for the Israeli army. In addition to bases in southern Israel, including the Nevatim air base, the U.S. has built command centers, intelligence offices and underground hangars to protect Israel’s jet aircraft.

Last year, U.S. defense contractors began constructing an air force base just outside Tel Aviv – known as the “site 911” – that will cost up to $100 million. Israel’s military hasn’t revealed the purpose of the site, but it’s widely thought that Israel is trying to move some of its military headquarters from high-value real estate in Tel Aviv to the outskirts of the bustling city.

Frenkel is a McClatchy special correspondent. Twitter: @sheeraf

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/03/192895/us-publishes-details-of-missile.html#.Ua4Y5EDqmSr#storylink=cpy

3 thoughts on “U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret

  1. I know Henry says that the Zionists and Communists are the same thing and while I agree for the most part in their overall plan, I still have this feeling that Zionists branch (Propaganda media control) is losing control by the Communist branch (which seems to me to be what the military is controlled under) and the Communists are getting ready to betray Israel like they betrayed everyone else in order to implement their own NWO.

    Remember: Obama is a Communist insurgent who is working with China and Russia, yet is trying to look like he is helping Zionist Israel.

    Let’s look at this scenario:

    They first help Iraq by getting rid of the Sunnis and then they backstab Iraq by helping Sunnis get rid of the Shia and other countries who do not follow the U.S. fiat currency. What’s to say that when that is over, they won’t team up with Russia to help the Shia get rid of the Zionists and the remaining Sunni and then backstab the Shia again and use the remaining blackmailed Zionists to implement their NWO Communism with Russia and China?

    What if the Zionists were so confidient, proud and so sure of themselves and their Protocols of Zion that they fail to see that another Communist threat is and has been sneaking up from behind them, ready to take them over, deceive them and blackmail them into implementing their NWO and putting the blame on the Zionists for everything while the hidden Communists are portrayed as the heroes that helped get rid of Zionism? The “lesser of two evils” crap again. Would the people fall for it?

    Everyone is saying that Russia and China are the only ones that can put a stop to all of this since everyone else is under tyrannical control. What if that was what it was meant to look like. Russia and China both are here in the U.S. under the guise of UN Troops and want us disarmed. The Zionists say we are suppose to be against them while the Communists say we are suppose to be working with them economically and to disarm the republic. All the more reason why WE THE PEOPLE need to rise up, take back our country and be an example of freedom again for the rest of the world to follow.

    Someone out there just seems to be playing both sides again and there is a war on two fronts. Both must be gotten rid of permanently and we are one of the few nations left, if not the ONLY nation left who has the ability to do it!

    1. I agree with a fair bit there, the only thing I would digress upon is that there is more than just two polar “agendas” at play here and several players are playing to more than one tune or not realising they are dancing to a hidden tune.

      America does have the ability but not the will for it would require the collapsing of its overseas military empire as much as its overseas economic empire for it to happen. America would have to default on its debt and reinvent the dollar and hope the creditors will take it on a 2-1 or 5-1 basis whilst not undertaking any more credit, forcing America into a phase of protectionism which in turn would force industry to rise again but the protectionism would have to be fairly brutal in order to breathe life into the US industrial base again and the Americans could learn from how Hitler used work script to make this happen taking Germany from a third world tanking economy post WWI to a first world economic power. You will notice that Germany gave up virtually all of its overseas interests and focused on Germany taking a step back from the world stage whilst doing so and it worked so damned well that Hitler was able to arm his military with cutting edge equipment in the build up to WWII.

      Russia and China have both played the game of empires and want nothing of it, they don’t want to control the planet, China has a hard enough job controlling the worlds biggest national population but what they do crave instead is equal opportunity and trade and it pursuing that ideal that used to be the mainstay of the US’s very being that has forced them to wage economic warfare to level the playing field because they are aware more than anyone that a lot of their resources are being handed over for pieces of paper with no worth backing them.

      But it is Americas out of control military spending that will pull it into the abyss, neither China nor Russia are responsible for this and that itself should be the target of every person in the US to reduce, the world no longer needs a policeman and it is time for Uncle Sam to hang up his spurs and let someone else take the blows.

  2. I think when we talk about zionists and communists we should remember it was the zionists who financed the Bolsheviks. And if memory serves me right jews were the overwhelming majority of the Bolshevik leaders and commisars. At times, when I see people debate communists, socialists, zionists, fascists, illuminatists, and so on and so forth…they see different entities competing for control. Me? I see multiple fingers all belonging to the same hand. In my humble opinion I think we should pay more attention to the hand. The competing fingers are merely for show.

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