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A joint U.S.-Israeli laser cannon can knock down rockets in flight, but it will not be ready for battlefield use until at least 2007, an official with the company developing the weapon said Wednesday.

The system, called Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), uses an advanced radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a laser beam to destroy them.

Israel is interested in the THEL, called the Nautilus in an earlier version, because of the threat from rockets on its border with Lebanon. During an 18-year guerrilla war that ended in 2000, Syria and Iran-backed Hezbollah guerrillas often fired small, unguided Katyusha rockets at Israeli border towns.

Though there have been no such attacks since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israeli officials have said that Hezbollah now has 11,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

Bob Bishop, media relations manager for Northrop-Grumman Corp., which is developing the system, said it has passed tests at the White Sands, N.M. facility since 2000. "It has shot down a number of Katyusha rockets and artillery shells, too," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. The test at White Sands marked the first time that a rocket has been destroyed in flight by a laser beam.

However, the test version of the system is stationary, and it could not be deployed in the battlefield until it is made mobile. That could happen in 2007, he said, if all the contracts are signed and production continues.

The project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56 million allocation, he said. It was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush on Sept. 30.

Israel will also contribute funding, but Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and security committee, did not know how much.

Congress also approved a further $89 million for a second joint U.S.-Israeli project, the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, which has already entered production, Steinitz said. The system is operational and was deployed during the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq to guard Israel against the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack.

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