The latest US air defense systems the Pentagon rushed to Israel are now “in place,” according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system deploys 100 U.S. troops for operations in Israel and is intended to strengthen the country's anti-missile defenses following an attack from Iran earlier this month.
“The THAAD system is in place,” Austin told reporters on his way to Ukraine on Monday. According to Reuters.
“We have the ability to get it up and running very quickly and it's going at the pace that we expected,” he added, but declined to say whether it was.
President Biden last week announced the deployment of THAAD “to protect Israel” after Iran fired a barrage of 180 ballistic missiles at the country on October 1. US allies are expected to launch retaliatory strikes targeting Iranian military assets.
The Biden administration has urged Israel to avoid attacks on Iran's nuclear and oil facilities as a way to avoid further escalation in the region, and last week Biden said he had no idea how Israel might attack Tehran. He said he understood.
But Austin told reporters on Monday that it was “hard to say exactly what an attack would look like” and that the US was still working to calm tensions.
“Ultimately, it is Israel's decision, and whether Israelis believe it is proportionate and how Iranians perceive it may be two different things.” That’s the thing,” he said.
“We're going to do everything we can and we're going to continue to do everything we can to ease the tension and hopefully get both sides to start de-escalating. So we'll see what happens.”
THAAD is one of the US military's most valuable air defense systems and one of its most expensive, at approximately $1 billion per battery. The weapon is capable of destroying short-, intermediate-, and medium-range ballistic missiles and is a major part of the U.S. military's layered air defense. It includes eight interceptors and six truck-mounted launchers each equipped with radar to detect incoming threats.
The U.S. previously sent THAAD squadrons to Israel for training after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and in 2019, according to the Pentagon.
