New defense budget bill foresees US-Israel counter-drone cooperation
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, shows a piece of an allegedly Iranian drone shot down by the Israeli Air Force. (MSC/Preiss)
JERUSALEM — For the first time, the National Defense Authorization Act includes a section on U.S.-Israel cooperation in countering unmanned aerial systems, in the fiscal 2019 version.
The cooperation will identify “capability gaps” of the U.S. and Israel in countering UAVs and seek out projects to address those gaps to strengthen U.S. and Israeli security. The new cooperation envisions funding for research and development efforts and identifying costs that foresee close cooperation modeled on previous successful programs that Israel and the U.S. have collaborated on, including missile defense and
anti-tunneling initiatives.
Israel and the U.S. have been at the forefront of air defense cooperation for decades. U.S. Reps. Charlie Crist and Mike Johnson introduced in February a bill titled “United States-Israel Joint Drone Detection Cooperation Act.” Parts of the bill were included in the NDAA passed in both houses of Congress in July.
“I am honored to have our bill included in the NDAA and to see it signed into law by President [Donald] Trump. This is an important step not only for our strongest ally in the Middle East but for the United States as well,” Johnson said in July. The president has not yet signed the NDAA into law,
but is expected to shortly.
The initiative foresees “joint research and development to counter unmanned aerial vehicles [which] will serve the national security interests of the United States and Israel.” Included as Section 1272 of the final NDAA presented to the president on Aug. 3, the cooperation contains five parts, including identification of the capability gaps that exist, identifying cooperative projects that would address the gaps, assessing the costs of the research and development, and assessing the costs of procuring and fielding the capabilities developed.
Reports on the cooperation will be submitted to the congressional defense committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
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