Germany and more than a dozen NATO allies want to buy air defence systems to safeguard allied territory from missiles, with Israel’s Arrow 3 system, the US Patriot, and German IRIS-T units among the alternatives, Berlin said on Thursday.
‘With this effort, we are living up to our shared responsibility for European security – by pooling our resources,’ German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said during a ceremony at NATO’s Brussels headquarters where 14 countries signed a letter of intent.
Estonia was not present at the ceremony but will participate in the ‘European Sky Shield’ programme. It includes Germany, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Norway, Latvia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, and Slovenia.
Ground-based air defence systems, such as Raytheon’s Patriot units or the more recently developed IRIS-T, are in short supply in many Western nations that were hesitant to invest much in military assets after the Cold War ended.
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