"Star Wars" agency helps Israel on rocket threat

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By Jim Wolf
8 minutes ago

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (Reuters) - The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has begun working with Israel to help find ways to counter enemy rockets, a much shorter-range threat than the "Star Wars" mission to block ballistic missiles for which is it known, the head of the agency said on Tuesday.

"We have been working with the Israelis ... as they go through with development of their own indigenous capabilities for that threat," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering told reporters after a speech at a missile-defense conference here.

"That is not mature. That is still in development," he said of the effort to defeat something he likened to mortar or artillery fire.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency grew out of the so-called "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative launched by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1983. It is building a multibillion-dollar shield designed to thwart all classes and ranges of incoming ballistic missiles.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060815/pl_nm/arms_mideast_usa_dc