U.S. Gulf Commander Pushes Allies in Region to Share Defenses

August 13, 2020

Bloomberg

The Pentagon has backed billions of dollars in sales of U.S.-built missile interceptors and sensors to allies in the Middle East. Now, the top American general in the region is renewing long-frustrated efforts to develop a shared system to detect threats from Iran.

“What you really want, ultimately, is the ability to commonly share an operational picture across all” the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council and “for them to be able to act based on threat input,” General Kenneth McKenzie, the chief of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview. “In a perfect world you’d like to get to a point where you have a common operational picture and everybody sees that.”

That would provide better targeting data for Patriot missile interceptors built by Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Technologies Corp. and, in the case of the United Arab Emirates, Lockheed’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, or Thaad, which is cued by a powerful radar.

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