Mexican tomato exporters are conducting unfair trade practices and dumping tomatoes into the U.S. market, despite the 2019 Tomato Suspension Agreement. This is forcing American tomato farmers out of business and destroying the domestic tomato industry. U.S....
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) office will host in-person and virtual Mobile Office Hours next week to assist constituents with federal casework issues in their respective local communities. These office hours offer constituents who do not live close to one of...
El senador estadounidense Marco Rubio (R-FL) habló con Nio Encendio de Maxima 92.5 de Tampa Bay, sobre cómo la inflación ha impactado a las familias, sobre las olas de migración ilegal, sobre el juicio político de Biden vs. el de Trump, sobre el canje de prisioneros...
This year alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered an estimated 40,000 Chinese nationals along the U.S. northern and southern border. The Biden Administration has left the border wide open, allowing potential spies from the Chinese Communist...
Gotion, Inc., a Chinese company and U.S. subsidiary of Guoxuan High-Tech, announced a lithium battery plant in Illinois that is expected to open next year. This CCP-tied battery company is expected to benefit from green-energy tax breaks under the Democrats’ Inflation...
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined National Public Radio’s All Things Considered to discuss his plan to expand the child tax credit for working families. See below for the full transcript and listen to the edited interview here. On the connection between the child...
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Mike Rounds (R-SD) sent a letter to Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), Chairman and Ranking Member, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, regarding efforts to fully fund U.S.-Israel cooperative missile defense programs in the Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2023. The senators called for $500 million to fund Israel’s missile defense system, which is made up of four operational layers: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow 2, and now Arrow 3. In addition to contributing to ballistic missile defense, the funding will support crucial work on research, development, and test activities to ensure our most important ally in the Middle East has the capabilities to defend itself against increasingly hostile unmanned aerial systems.
“Joint U.S.-Israel collaboration on Israel’s multilayer missile defense system is instrumental to the defense of Israel,” the senators wrote. “Since 1986, Congress and successive administrations have demonstrated bipartisan support for joint U.S.-Israel missile defense collaboration. This partnership has helped build and maintain a multi-tiered Israeli missile defense system capable of countering a wide range of threats from state and non-state actors.”
Click here for a full list of cosigners.
The full text of the letter is below.
Dear Chairman Tester and Ranking Member Shelby:
Thank you for this committee’s strong support of U.S.-Israel collaborative defense programs, including Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow, as well as our continued cooperative work on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). As you begin work on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Defense Appropriations bill, we write seeking $500 million for continued support for these programs in order to meet the United States’ and Israel’s national security needs.
Joint U.S.-Israel collaboration on Israel’s multilayer missile defense system is instrumental to the defense of Israel. Since 1986, Congress and successive Administrations have demonstrated bipartisan support for joint U.S.-Israel missile defense collaboration. This partnership has helped build and maintain a multi-tiered Israeli missile defense system capable of countering a wide range of threats from state and non-state actors. In September 2016, this support was expressed in a
Memorandum of Understanding reached with Israel on long-term funding for military assistance to Israel, including missile defense.
Israel’s missile defense system is made up of four operational layers: Iron Dome (short-range), David’s Sling (medium-range), Arrow 2 (longer range), and now Arrow 3 (very long range). The U.S.-Israeli cooperation has resulted in a system that can, and has, countered numerous missile threats from state and non-state adversaries in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. This system provides Israel with the ability to protect lives at home and on the battlefield, keeping its citizens and soldiers out of harm’s way.
Another area of critical importance to both the United States and Israel is in the field of UAS and, perhaps as importantly, counter-UAS. Iran and its proxies’ increased use and sales of UAS only heighten the importance of these systems. The collaborative defense program has created an important flow of data to support U.S. service members in theater, U.S. missile defense technology, and our strategic ally, Israel. Additionally, the programs support critical elements of the industrial base and important jobs in the United States through co-development and co-production agreements. For FY 2023, in addition to ballistic missile defense, $500 million will continue critical work on research, development and test activities to counter hostile unmanned aerial systems.
Together, these programs confront the compelling challenges facing both Israel and the United States and represent the security-based and economic tenets of the enduring friendship of our nations. We look forward to working with you on these important programs.
Sincerely,