JERUSALEM, May 18 (Reuters) – Israel’s army stated on Wednesday it had developed a model of its Iron Dome missile interceptor system that may be fired from the deck of a cruising navy ship to guard its offshore fuel platforms.

The augmented protection system handed a stay take a look at two weeks in the past when it shot down a number of short-range ballistic missiles from a shifting boat, stated Colonel Ariel Shir, the navy’s head of operational programs.

Israel has boosted its naval defenses over the previous decade after the invention of sizeable pure fuel deposits off its Mediterranean coast.

While the most important fields are removed from shore, the fuel flows to platforms in shallower waters that may be seen from the southern Israeli coast, placing them in vary of the sorts of rockets fired by militants within the Gaza Strip.

Iron Dome batteries have confirmed able to taking pictures down round 90 p.c of Palestinian rockets fired from Gaza, based on Israel and the United States, which has helped bankroll the system.

Until now Iron Dome had been a static system that was solely fired from land. It has wanted a sequence of software program and algorithm changes to assist it meet the navy’s necessities.

The newest take a look at proved that the “the Iron Dome of the sea” is operational, Shir stated, and it’ll enhance the navy’s “capability to protect Israel’s strategic assets at sea against short-range ballistic rockets.” (Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

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