Nasdaq 04 Ottobre 2008

JERUSALEM: srael will install two radar antennae near the Dimona nuclear plant to bolster its defense measures against Iran, Maariv newspaper reported Friday.

The 400 meter-high antennae will be erected in the Negev desert near a military site where Israel is widely believed to have developed the only nuclear weapons cache in the Middle East, the paper said.

An Israeli army spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the report.

Maariv said work on the twin masts, which would be the largest in the region, would begin in two weeks and would be completed in three months, but didn't provide details on what the system would be used for.

The newspaper said the antennae were part of a massive new radar system that the U.S. will deploy in Israel, a project announced by the Pentagon earlier this week.

The deployment comes amid heightened fears regarding Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which the U.S. and Israel say is aimed at developing weapons, but Iran insists its program is entirely peaceful.

Israel has long considered Iran its main strategic threat, both because of its nuclear program and repeated statements by Iranian leaders predicting the demise of Israel.

The Pentagon was scheduled to deploy the radar to Israel in the autumn of 2009 for a joint exercise, but moved it up a year following high-level talks in Washington.

The U.S. deployed a similar radar to Japan in 2006 in response to a North Korean missile test.

Also known as X-Band, the AN/TPY2 radar is designed to track ballistic missile warheads through space and provide ground-based missiles with the targeting data needed to intercept them.

Data from the system will be provided to Israel's missile defense system, but the radar will remain owned and operated by the U.S. military.

Source >  Nasdaq | oct 03