Advanced US anti-missile system now ‘in place’ in Israel

The advanced U.S. air defense system the Pentagon rushed to Israel is now “in place,” according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, along with the deployment of 100 American troops to operate it in Israel, is meant to add to the country’s anti-missile defenses following an attack from Iran earlier this month.

“The THAAD system is in place,” Austin told reporters en route to Ukraine on Monday, according to Reuters.

“We have the ability to put it into operation very quickly and we’re on pace with our expectations,” he added, though would not say whether it was operational.

President Biden last week announced the THAAD’s deployment “to defend Israel” following Iran’s barrage of 180 ballistic missiles aimed at the country on Oct. 1. The U.S. ally is expected to launch a retaliatory strike aimed at Iranian military assets.  

The Biden administration has urged Israel to avoid hitting Iranian nuclear or oil sites as a way to avoid further escalation in the region, and last week Biden said he had a good idea of how Israel would attack Tehran. 

But Austin told reporters on Monday it is “hard to say exactly what that strike will look like,” and that the U.S. was still working to quell tensions.

“At the end of the day, that’s an Israeli decision, and whether or not the Israelis believe it’s proportional and how the Iranians perceive it, I mean those may be two different things,” he said.

“We’re going to do — continue to do — everything we can … to dial down the tensions and hopefully get both parties to begin to de-escalate. So, we’ll see what happens.”

THAAD is one of the U.S. military’s most prized air defense systems, and one of its most expensive, coming in at about $1 billion per battery. The weapons can take out short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and are a major part of the U.S. military’s layered air defenses. It includes six truck-mounted launchers carrying eight interceptors each and a radar to detect incoming threats.

The U.S. sent Israel a THAAD battery after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas into Israel, and in 2019 for training, according to the Pentagon.