Army: Helping Israel With Air Defense Comes at a Cost

The deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army's air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday. The service's top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants, the AP reports.

"The air defense, artillery community is the most stressed," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, discussing the quick pace of operations. The Army has to be careful about "what we take on," she said. "But of course, in a world this volatile, you know, sometimes we have to do what we have to do." The Pentagon announced the THAAD deployment Sunday, saying it was at the direction of President Biden. Officials said that the system will be moved from a location in the continental US to Israel and that it will take a number of days for it and the soldiers to arrive, per the AP. The move adds to tensions in the Defense Department about what weapons the US can afford to send to Ukraine, Israel, or elsewhere and the resulting risks to America's military readiness.

"Everybody wants US Army air defense forces," Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the US Army's conference. "This is our most deployed formation." He said the Army is looking at ways to limit the impact on recruiting and retention, including growing the force and modernizing systems so that it takes fewer soldiers to operate them. But the repeated deployments makes it difficult to get the systems into the depots where they can be upgraded. "So we're trying to lay that out for Secretary Austin," Wormuth said, "so that he can weigh those risks—essentially current versus future risks—as he makes recommendations to the president about whether to send the Patriot here or there."

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