Jericho (missile)
Jericho | |
---|---|
Type | Ballistic missile |
Place of origin | Israel |
Service history | |
In service |
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Used by | |
Production history | |
Designer | Initially in collaboration with Dassault Aviation |
Manufacturer | Israel Aerospace Industries |
Unit cost | Classified |
Produced |
|
No. built | Classified |
Specifications | |
Mass |
|
Length |
|
Diameter |
|
Warhead |
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Detonation mechanism | Impact and proximity |
Engine | Multiple-stage solid rocket |
Propellant | Solid |
Operational range |
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Maximum speed | Hypersonic |
Guidance system | Inertial with terminal guidance |
Launch platform | Silo or Mobile (truck-mounted) |
Jericho (Hebrew: יריחו, romanized: Yericho) is a general designation given to a loosely-related family of deployed ballistic missiles developed by Israel since the 1960s. The name is taken from the first development contract for the Jericho I signed between Israel and Dassault in 1963, with the codename as a reference to the Biblical city of Jericho. As with some other Israeli high tech weapons systems, exact details are classified, though there are observed test data, public statements by government officials, and details in open literature especially about the Shavit satellite launch vehicle.
The later Jericho family development is related to the Shavit and Shavit II space
The civilian space launch version of the Jericho, the Shavit, was studied in an air launched version piggybacked on a
Jericho I
Jericho I was first publicly identified being an operational short-range ballistic missile system in late 1971. It was 13.4 metres (44 ft) long, 0.8 m (2 ft 7 in) in diameter, weighing 6.5 tonnes (14,000 lb). It had a range of 500 km (310 mi) and a CEP of 1,000 m (3,300 ft), and it could carry a payload estimated at 400 kilograms (880 lb). It was intended to carry a nuclear warhead.[6][7] Due to Israel's ambiguity over its nuclear weapons program, the missile is classified as a ballistic missile. Initial development was in conjunction with France, Dassault provided various missile systems from 1963 and a type designated MD-620 was test fired in 1965. French co-operation was halted by an arms embargo in January 1968, though 12 missiles had been delivered from France.[7] Work was continued by IAI at the Beit Zachariah facility and the program cost almost $1 billion up to 1980, incorporating some U.S. technology.[8] Despite some initial problems with its guidance systems, it is believed that around 100 missiles of this type were produced.
In 1969, Israel agreed with the United States that Jericho missiles would not be used as "strategic missiles", with nuclear warheads, until at least 1972.[9]
During the October 1973
It is believed that all Jericho 1 missiles were taken out of service in the 1990s and replaced with the longer-range Jericho 2. The Jericho 1 missiles were housed in Zekharia, located southeast of Tel Aviv and stationed in caves.[16]
Jericho II
The Jericho II (YA-3) is a solid fuel, two-stage
A request from Israel for 1,100 mile (1,770 km) range
The Jericho II is 14.0 m long and 1.56 m wide, with a reported launch weight of 26,000 kg (although an alternative launch weight of 21,935 kg has been suggested). It has a 1,000 kg payload, capable of carrying a considerable amount of high explosives or a 1 Megaton yield nuclear warhead. It uses a two-stage solid propellant engine with a separating warhead. The missile can be launched from a silo, a railroad flat car, or a mobile vehicle. This gives it the ability to be hidden, moved quickly, or kept in a hardened silo, largely ensuring survival against any attack.[21] It has an active radar homing terminal guidance system similar to that of the Pershing II, for very accurate strikes.[22]
The Jericho II forms the basis of the three-stage, 23 ton Shavit NEXT satellite launcher, first launched in 1988 from Palmachim. From the performance of Shavit it has been estimated that as a ballistic missile it has a maximum range of about 7,800 km with a 500 kg payload.[8]
The Jericho II as an available Israeli counterattack option to Iraqi missile bombardment in the 1991
Jericho III
It is believed that the Jericho III (YA-4) is a nuclear-armed
According to an official report that was submitted to the U.S. Congress in 2004, it may be that with a payload of 1,000 kg the Jericho III gives Israel nuclear strike capabilities within the entire Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and almost all parts of
After a successful missile test launch conducted in early 2008, Israeli weapons expert General Itzhak Ben-Israel, former chairman of the Israeli Space Agency at the Ministry of Science, said "Everybody can do the mathematics... we can reach with a rocket engine to every point in the world", thus appearing to confirm Israel's new capability. Israeli Ministry of Defense officials said that the 2008 test launch represented a "dramatic leap in Israel's missile technologies".[36]
After a further test in 2013 Alon Ben David published this opinion in an article in Aviation Week on the missile's range and throw weight: "Reportedly, Israel's Jericho III intermediate-range ballistic missile is capable of carrying a 1,000-kg (2,204-lb.) warhead more than 5,000 km."[37] Further tests conducted in July 2013 could have been for the Jericho 3 or possibly the Jericho 3A missile, a follow-up missile believed to have a new motor.[29]
South African RSA Series
The Jericho II/Shavit SLV was also license produced in the Republic of South Africa as the RSA series of space launch vehicles and ballistic missiles.
The RSA-3 was produced by the Houwteq (a discontinued division of
The missiles were to be based on the RSA-3 and RSA-4 launchers that had already been built and tested for the South African space programme. According to Al J Venter, author of How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs, these missiles were incompatible with the available large South African nuclear warheads, he claims that the RSA series being designed for a 340 kg payload would suggest a warhead of some 200 kg, "well beyond SA's best efforts of the late 1980s." Venter's analysis is that the RSA series was intended to display a credible delivery system combined with a separate nuclear test in a final diplomatic appeal to the world powers in an emergency even though they were never intended to be used in a weaponized system together.[45] Three rockets had already been launched into suborbital trajectories in the late 1980s in support of development of the RSA-3 launched Greensat Orbital Management System (for commercial satellite applications of vehicle tracking and regional planning). Following the decision in 1989 to cancel the nuclear weapons program, the missile programs were allowed to continue until 1992, when military funding ended, and all ballistic missile work was stopped by mid-1993. In order to join the Missile Technology Control Regime, the government had to allow U.S. supervision of the destruction of key facilities applicable to both the long range missile and the space launch programmes.[46]
Variant | Date of launch | Launch location | Payload | Mission status |
RSA-3 | 1989 June 1 | Overberg Test Range | RSA-3-d 1 | Apogee: 100 km (60 mi) |
RSA-3 | 1989 July 6 | Overberg Test Range | RSA-3 2 | Apogee: 300 km (180 mi) |
RSA-3 | 1990 November 19 | Overberg Test Range | RSA-3 3 | Apogee: 300 km (180 mi) |
In June 1994, the RSA-3 / RSA-4 South African satellite launcher program was cancelled.[47]
See also
- Shavit
- Military equipment of Israel
- List of missiles
References
- ^ "Delivery systems", Israel (country profile), NTI, archived from the original on 2013-09-21, retrieved 2013-06-23.
- ^ https://unoda-web.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/HomePage/ODAPublications/DisarmamentStudySeries/PDF/SS-23.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ Von Wielligh, N. & von Wielligh-Steyn, L. (2015). The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Programme. Pretoria: Litera.
- ^ a b "RSA-3". Archived from the original on August 20, 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
- ^ "Israel Studies Airborne Launch Scheme for Shavit Rocket". SpaceNews.com. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- CIA, 23 August 1974, SNIE 4-1-74, retrieved 2008-01-20
- ^ a b Kissinger, Henry A (16 July 1969), "Israeli Nuclear Program" (PDF), Memorandum for the President, The White House, retrieved 2009-07-26
- ^ a b "Ballistic Missile Proliferation". Canadian Security Intelligence Service. March 23, 2001. 2000/09. Archived from the original on December 26, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-21.
- ^ Kissinger, Henry A (7 October 1969), "Discussions with the Israelis on nuclear matters" (PDF), Memorandum for the President, The White House, retrieved 2006-07-02
- ^ "Violent Week: The Politics of Death". Time. April 12, 1976. Archived from the original on May 1, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2011.
- ^ Air War College, September 1999.
- ^ a b Cohen, Avner. "The Last Nuclear Moment" The New York Times, October 6, 2003.
- ^ "Jericho 1".
- ^ http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/octwar-10.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ October 9, 1973, conversation (6:10–6:35 pm) between Israeli Ambassador to the United States Simcha Dinitz, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Peter Rodman. Transcript George Washington University National Security Archive.
- ^ "Jericho 1".
- ^ "Jericho 2".
- ^ "Missiles for Peace". Time. September 29, 1975. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 2, 2008.
- ^ "Jericho 1/2/3 | Missile ThreatYA-1, YA-3, YA-4 | Missile Threat". Archived from the original on 2013-01-21. Retrieved 2012-09-12.
- Jane's Information Group. 2009-04-21. Retrieved 2010-04-17.
- ^ "Jericho 2". MissileThreat. 2008-01-17. Archived from the original on 2010-06-24. Retrieved 2010-06-21.
- ^ "5 Weapons That Make It Clear Israel Dominates the Sky". 2018-04-14.
- ^ Duncan Lennox, ed., "Jericho 1/2/3 (YA-1/YA-3) (Israel), Offensive Weapons," Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems, Issue 50, (Surrey: Jane's Information Group, January 2009), pp. 84-86.
- ^ Seth W. Carus, "Israeli Ballistic Missile Developments," Testimony before the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, 15 July 1998, www.fas.org.
- ^ Raytheon Systems Company, Missile Systems of the World, (Bremerton, WA: AMI International, 1999), p. 459.
- ^ Joseph Cirincione, Jon B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), p. 230. Identifying the specific deployment date of the Jericho-2 arsenal at Sdot Micha would provide knowledge about the operational status of the Jericho-2 during the 1991 Iraq War. Probable test flights from Israel and South Africa around 1989 would indicate that the R&D phase of the Jericho-2 project was nearing completion at that date. Scale-up and transition from the R&D phase to the manufacturing phase would likely have required several years, however, as would necessary expansion or modifications to the Sdot Micha airbase. Commercial satellite images showing expansion of the base would be consistent with a deployment date roughly 4 to 5 years after the initial test flights, thus implying that the Jericho-2 was not yet deployed during the 1991 Iraq War.
- ^ "Israel's new anti-ballistic missile system 'phenomenal' in testing". The Times of Israel.
- ^ "Report: Israel improving nuclear abilities". Ynetnews. October 31, 2011.
- ^ a b c "Jericho 3".
- ^ a b "Jericho 3". Missile Threat. 2012-03-26. Archived from the original on 2013-01-21. Retrieved 2012-09-12.
- ^ [Missile Survey: Ballistic and Cruise Missiles of Foreign Countries http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl30427.pdf], Andrew Feickert, Congressional Research Service, March 5, 2004.
- ^ Azoulay, Yuval (18 January 2008). "Missile test 'will improve deterrence'". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 14 April 2010. Retrieved 5 January 2012.
- ^ Pfeffer, Anshel (2 November 2011). "IDF test-fires ballistic missile in central Israel". Haaretz. Retrieved 3 November 2011.
- ^ Plushnick-Masti, Ramit (2006-08-25). "Israel Buys 2 Nuclear-Capable Submarines". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
- ^ "Missile survey: ballistic & cruise missiles of foreign countries" (PDF)..
- ISBN 978-1-4422-5899-0.
- ^ "Israel Tests Enhanced Ballistic Missile". Aviation Week. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ http://www.armscontrol.org/system/files/ACT_South%20Africa_9601.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ Iain McFadyen. "The South African Rocket & Space Programme". Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ Guy Martin (25 January 2011). "Satellites for South Africa". Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "RSA-4". Archived from the original on 5 August 2014. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "RSA". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "RSA-1". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "RSA-2". Archived from the original on 19 June 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ Leon Engelbrecht (4 January 2010). "Book Review: How SA built six atom bombs". Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "Jericho". Archived from the original on 29 May 2010. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
- ^ "South Africa". astronautix.com. Archived from the original on August 20, 2016. Retrieved 2016-07-08.
External links
- "Israel Missile Update", Countries, Wisconsin project, 2005, archived from the original on 2006-07-19.
- "Jericho 3 the main Israel ballistic missile", Sketchup, 2006, archived from the original on 2007-11-14, retrieved 2007-10-20
- Feasibility of Third World Advanced Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat (PDF), NDIA, archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-10-09.
- Feasibility of Third World Advanced Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat (PDF) (graphics), vol. 1, NDIA, archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03, retrieved 2009-09-04.