Spain will spend around 1,400 million to have an effective anti-missile defense

The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, during her visit to the San Bernardo de Jaca barracks, on September 1. JAVIER BLASCO (EFE)

Spain will spend 1,389 million euros to modernize its Patriot batteries and equip itself with a real anti-missile defense system.

The modernization, which will involve going from configuration 2+ to 3, will be carried out between 2023 and 2028 and will entail a first disbursement of 140 million next year, according to the annex of real investments and multi-year programming sent by the Government to the Cortes together with the General State Budget project.

This strong investment is one of the reasons why Spain has not wanted to join the European Anti-Missile Shield (European Skyshield) promoted by Germany, to which fifteen European countries have joined.

The Spanish Government undertook, at the NATO summit in Prague in 2002, to equip itself with an anti-missile defense system, and to this end, in 2004 and 2014, it acquired three second-hand Patriot batteries from the German Army, for 60 million euros. euros the first and 41 million the remaining two.

Since January 2015, the Spanish Army has deployed one of these batteries at the Incirlik base (Turkey), near the Syrian border.

Its theoretical objective is to protect the base from a possible attack from one of the opposing sides in the civil war in the neighboring country, although military experts agree that this threat has not existed for years and the mission is a political gesture of solidarity between NATO with Turkey, although Spain is the only ally that maintains it.

For years, the Defense General Staff has had among its priorities the modernization of the Patriot, but the lack of resources has forced it to be delayed.

However, the projected modernization is not just a fine-tuning, but a true qualitative leap: Spain will go from having a defense system against aircraft, with a limited anti-missile capacity;

to a system specialized in the interception of ballistic missiles.

Soldiers from the Zaragoza General Military Academy attend explanations about the battery of a Hawk missile during the Cierzo 2003 maneuvers, held at the San Gregorio National Training Center in Zaragoza. JAVIER CEBOLLADA (EFE)

Among other improvements, the change from configuration 2+ to 3 will mean, according to experts, going from a launcher of four missiles to one of 16, each equipped with an active seeker (they illuminate the target by themselves) and capable of destroying the enemy missile by collision (“

, according to military jargon) instead of exploding in its vicinity, with the risk that this entails of not destroying its warhead or of the debris falling out of control in a large area.

This technological leap explains, add the same sources, why the new version is considered a true anti-missile system and also its high cost.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Iranian drone strikes against critical infrastructure in the neighboring country (such as power plants) have made it clear that anti-aircraft defense is a critical capability.

Germany, with a fund of 100,000 million to modernize its Armed Forces, has reviewed the different layers of its anti-aircraft defense and has detected huge gaps that it intends to close with its European Anti-Missile Shield project.

The spearhead of the system will be the Arrow 3, a missile with US and Israeli technology, and the letter of intent (LOI) to launch it was signed on October 13 by 13 European NATO countries and Finland.

Although the majority are neighbors of Russia, there are also Belgium, Holland or the United Kingdom.

Spain alleged that it had not been formally invited, although there were previous conversations between officials of the two countries in which Germany sounded out Madrid's availability to join the project.

Spain did not show any enthusiasm, according to the sources consulted.

First, because it has its own program (which includes the modernization of the Patriot) and because it also has NATO's anti-missile shield, which has its naval component in the four US destroyers (in the future there will be six) docked at the Rota base. (Cadiz).

That does not mean, the same sources allege, that later on Spain cannot join any joint purchase and that the Spanish air defense system will not be connected to the future European Anti-Missile Shield through NATO.

The Spanish anti-aircraft defense does not have the holes that Germany has acknowledged with alarm.

“We have everything there is to have, even if we don't have the latest model or the amount we need,” says a veteran gunner.

Some equipment has become obsolete and urgently needs to be modernized, such as the Patriot, but also NASAMS, a Norwegian medium-altitude defense system of which the Army has deployed a battery in Latvia with the NATO combat group in which it is they integrate the Spanish troops;

or the Mistral, a French-made low and very low-altitude missile.

The oldest of all is the Hakw, an American missile with a 40-kilometre range that is more than half a century old and, despite this, is still considered effective.

Washington urgently demanded that the more than 40 countries that are part of the Ukraine Support Group hand over to kyiv.

But very few were in a position to supply it immediately, since most have already withdrawn it, starting with the United States.

Spain, which has 12 batteries in service with 36 Hakw launchers in total, offered four.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg publicly thanked him.

Subscribe to continue reading

read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber