Israel is a small country surrounded by countries which don’t recognize it as such which has forced Israel to pour a lot of investments into its defense industry inorder to be able to protect itself. These investments have both produced offensive weapons which offer deterrence capabilities and defensive weapons like iron dome missile defense system which has so far been able to protect Israel from Hamas rockets.
For starters, Israel sits in one of the most volatile regions in the world. The security situation can easily change in unpredictable way as different groups and countries fight for influence and control over each other and over resources.
Israel which in basic laws define itself as a Jewish and democratic state and as well as a nation-state of Jewish people sits in the region mostly ruled by kings and their family members who take Islam as their only religion. Its this difference in culture and religion that has put Israel for much of its existence on collision course with other neighboring countries in the region.
Its not only culture and religion difference that is causing enmity between Israel and many Arab countries but also land, where important places in religion in both Christianity and Islam sits. With the emergency of Zionism as a Jewish national monument in late 19th century partially in response to growing anti-Semitism and as Jewish return from foreign countries increased, during world war I, the British empire announced publicly that it was committed to creating a national Jewish home and was granted a mandate to rule Palestine by the league of Nations for this purpose.
Arab countries which were weak at time opposed this move and also claimed rights over Palestine and other former ottoman empire territories and thought to prevent Jewish people from migrating to Palestine which led to increased Arab-Jewish tensions.
In 1948, Israel was formed as British government promised or gained Independence and this led to mass exodus of muslims to Arab countries and exodus of Jewish from Arab countries to Israel and as of today, about 43% of all Jewish people in the world live in Israel.
The creation of Israel didn’t only give Jewish people a home but also created enmity with many Arab countries which resulted in many wars where Israel prevailed with the support of US and its allies like UK and Canada.
From then Israel has been directly supported by US and its allies, supplied Israel weapons with lastest technology,funds and investments to support its economic development in a region which is very dry in return Israel has been a satellite country aiming to maintain US influence in the region.
Due to ever changing public opinions and politics in US, Israel leaders decided that they needed defense industry of their own incase support received from the US stopped because of the above reasons and by 2018, Israel defense industry had grown becoming one of few countries able to export arms which earned Israel about 7.5 billion dollars in the same year.
The money was got from export of missile systems and defense systems which accounted for about 25% of total export, unmanned aerial vehicles accounted for 15%, radar and electronic warfare systems accounted for 14%, upgrade and avionics accounted for 14% and weapons stations for 12%.
The above data shows that Israeli puts a great importance to offensive weapons like missiles as much as defensive weapons like iron dome because of neighborhood its lives.
On put of defensive weapons, Israel is increasingly looking for new ways to improve on their defensive capabilities since its rival countries like Iran has developed one of the most powerful and sophisticated ballistic missile systems in the region with the aim of targeting and bypassing Israel missile defense systems.
And that’s where the idea of using laser come in, laser is a powerful offensive weapon and at the sometime a powerful defensive weapon if you get your technical aspects of it right since it can offer unlimited supply of anergy therefore not worry about depletion of animations or time to reload and it also gives quick response since it uses energy from light as a weapon.
Laser as a weapon offers the cheapest way to defend yourself and that’s why many countries including Israel are investing in laser technology.
According to current Israel prime minister Bennett who announced a major technological change in security of country, Israel is to be surrounded by the wall of lasers so that missiles can be destroyed mid-way.
Bennett told a security conference that Isreal was rapidly deploying lasers technology to protect the country from rocket attacks and promised that within one year, laser technology would be deployed in southern part of the country for testing before deploying around the country inorder to form a defensive laser wall.
