The US has greatly reduced the scale of its participation in a joint military exercise with Israel scheduled for late October. The US will send only 1,500 troops, down from the originally planned 5,000 troops. Patriot anti-missile systems will be sent but the crews to operate them will not. Only one Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warship may be dispatched instead of the originally planned two. The scaling back coincides with tensions between the US and Israel over the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.