An Arrow 3 test in February 2013. Photo: United States Missile Defense Agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday thanked U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Barrasso (R-WY) for America’s support of the Arrow-3 Interceptor, which successfully completed a second launch test earlier in the day.

At the start of a meeting at his office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, “I want to thank the Senators for their support, for the support of the American government, for the Arrow program.”

“We had today a successful launch. This is a great advance in Israel’s ability to protect itself against ballistic missiles,” Netanyahu said. “We need a lot of protection in this area because there are bad regimes led by Iran, and terrorist proxies who have missiles that are periodically fired against us. We protect ourselves by having the ability to fight back but also by having the ability to defend ourselves. That is what Arrow is for and I thank you for it.”

Earlier on Friday, the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) completed the successful flight of the Arrow-3 Interceptor missile, its second flight test, which was conducted at an Israeli test range over the Mediterranean Sea.

At 08:00 the Arrow-3 successfully launched and flew an exoatmospheric trajectory through space, according to the test plan, the IDF said.

The Arrow-3 was designed to provide another layer of defense against ballistic missiles, to add interception opportunities to the joint U.S. – Israel Arrow Weapon System and to improve the active defense architecture of the State of Israel against the missile threats it faces, it said.

The successful test is a major milestone in the development of the Arrow-3 Weapon System and provides confidence in future Israeli capabilities to defeat the developing ballistic missile threats.

The main contractor for the integration and the development of the Arrow Weapon System is Israel Aerospace Industries’s MLM,  in conjunction with Boeing.