Berlin seeks to buy an Israeli or American missile defence system Iskander missiles can hit almost all of Western Europe and there is no missile shield in place to protect against it /quote]
Berlin[/B] is considering buying a missile defence system from Israel or the United States to defend against threats such as the Russian Iskander missiles deployed at Kaliningrad, according to a report today in the German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
Iskander missiles can hit almost all of Western Europe and there is no missile shield in place to protect against this threat, the Inspector General of the German Armed Forces, Eberhard Chorn, tells Welt am Sonntag in an interview published today. The Israelis and the Americans have such systems, which do we prefer? Will we manage to install a comprehensive system (missile defence) in NATO? These are questions we have to answer now, Chorn said. He did not name those systems, but was likely referring to the Arrow 3, manufactured by the Israeli group Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and the American THAAD system produced by Raytheon.
Russia announced in 2018 that it had deployed Iskander missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave, a piece of Russian territory squeezed between Poland and Lithuania. The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system, has replaced the Soviet Scud missiles and its two remotely controlled missiles can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
In a landmark speech a few days after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Berlin would increase its defence spending to over 2% of its GDP by injecting €100 billion into the armed forces. Chorn is part of a group of senior officials consulting with Scholz on how that money will be spent.
So far, only one thing is clear: we have neither the time nor the money to develop our own such (missile defense) systems because the missile threat is known to already exist, Chorn said. Referring to the fact that Germany does not have short-range missile defence that can be used to protect troops on the move or under threat during their deployment, he said Berlin has started to consider buying such systems and must now make a decision. Beyond that, the German armed forces need to invest 20 billion euros by 2032 to fill their ammunition depots again, Chorn added.
Source: CNA
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