The proposed air-defense acquisition by the German military to replace Germany’s Patriot air-defense batteries, hangs in the balance, Defence News reported.
Raytheon is intensifying pressure on Berlin to continue with upgrading their existing Patriot hardware.
According to Patriot vendors, Germany runs the risk of building a defense so new that no country around it would have the same, risking interoperability of NATO in Europe.
Some neighbouring countries, such as Poland, have opted for Patriots in recent years. After years of negotiation, Poland officially signed a letter of offer and acceptance for Patriot air-and-missile defense systems. The Patriot systems’ “operation readiness” is set for 2023, according to the agreement.
Poland is expected to receive eight batteries that will cost a total of $7.5 billion, to “counteract Russia’s Iskander missile systems”.
The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary of its kind used by the United States Army and several allied nations. It is manufactured by the US defense contractor Raytheon and derives its name from the radar component of the weapon system.
The system has been purchased by 13 nations. Countries with Patriot missile defense systems include The Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, Republic of Korea, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Managing Director Thomas Gottschild of MBDA Deutschland however believes Germany should design a brand-new system.
In addition, a new project, dubbed TLVS, would enable for Germany to lure new customers looking to abandon Patriots, he argued. “Basically, every Patriot customer is a future customer of ours,” Gottschild explained during a media briefing at the Berlin Air Show last week. “So when Patriot systems are getting obsolete, we are there to replace the system components … with TLVS.”
Fears have been expressed about the state of the Patriot system. Russian military expert Andrey Golovatyuk, told Sputnik News: “I doubt that the Patriot systems will be capable of countering our Iskander missiles because they have the [wrong] characteristics, meaning that the Patriot will not have enough time to intercept an Inskander missile as such. As far as tactical and technical characteristics are concerned, our Iskander systems are superior to the Patriot ones.”
An up-dated Patriot system would mean Washington extracting money from Polish taxpayers for an upgrade, Golovatyuk argues.
Raytheon however claims that Patriots would mean lower costs and faster delivery, together with Rheinmetall, but German ministry officials have continued to support TLVS.
Gottschild meanwhile is unfased by Raytheon’s promotion. “They don’t have any data, they don’t know the requirements, so they can make any statement they want. They don’t have to prove it.”
The programme, says the developers, proposes a generational leap in air defense, but Raytheon has suggested that it would be too costly to go ahead.
But Tim Cahill, a vice president at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control unit, said there will not be “any surprises” as talks about costs with government officials in Germany have been ongoing.
“They’ve been in the negotiations for months. They know exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”