PARIS \u2014 Denmark will receive the French-Italian SAMP\/T NG air-defense system starting in 2028 after orders were signed in the first quarter of this year, according to French defense firm Thales, which will supply the radar for the Danish system.<\/p>\n
The Danish version of the system will be equipped with the Thales Ground Fire 300 radar, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. The purchase officially makes Denmark the third country to join the club of SAMP\/T NG clients, alongside France and Italy, Thales said.<\/p>\n
Denmark in September picked the SAMP\/T system<\/a> over the American-made Patriot. That decision looks increasingly fortuitous after the United States government flagged possible delays<\/a> linked to the Iran war in deliveries of weapons and ammunition to the Baltic countries, and after Switzerland said in March it faces delays in Patriot deliveries of four to five years.<\/p>\n \u201cDenmark will benefit from the increased production capacity for the SAMP\/T NG system and the production of Aster missiles, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2028,\u201d Thales said.<\/p>\n Missile maker MBDA plans to double production<\/a> of the Aster family of air-defense missiles in 2026 in response to surging demand. In addition to arming the ground-based SAMP\/T system, the missiles are used for high-end air defense by the French, Italian and British navies. MBDA declined to comment on the timing of delivering Aster missiles to Denmark.<\/p>\n Thales recorded the Danish SAMP\/T contract as one of its \u201clarge orders\u201d with a value of more than \u20ac100 million (US$118 million) in the first quarter, with the French company supplying the radar and command-and-control system as well as the seeker for the Aster missile.<\/p>\n The SAMP\/T system is made by Eurosam, a joint venture between Thales and MBDA\u2019s French and Italian branches. The upgraded system will work with MBDA\u2019s Aster 30 Block 1 New Technology interceptor, with a range of 150 kilometers, a new Ka-band seeker and designed to intercept medium-range ballistic missiles as well as hypersonic missiles.<\/p>\n The first test firing of the updated Aster missile was conducted in October 2024 in a \u201ccomplex scenario\u201d with several targets, with a second qualification firing<\/a> in July 2025 to validate the interceptor\u2019s long-range capability. The fire-control unit of the SAMP\/T NG received new software to work with the Aster 30 B1NT missile.<\/p>\n The Thales Ground Fire radar family<\/a> has a claimed range of up to 400 kilometers with 360\u00b0 coverage, using a rotating S-band active electronically scanned array (AESA) antenna. The company says the radar and its associated power generator are standard-container sized and can be set up in less than 15 minutes.<\/p>\n After Italy and France ordered<\/a> ten and eight of the next-generation systems in September 2024, respectively, the Italian Army took delivery<\/a> of its first SAMP\/T NG in January. The Italian version comes equipped with Leonardo\u2019s Kronos Grand Mobile HP radar, with an air-surveillance instrument range of at least 300 kilometers.<\/p>\n France\u2019s Air Warfare Center received its first system<\/a> in February, kicking off a period of operational testing, to be \u201cquickly followed\u201d by gradual integration of SAMP\/T NG into the French armed forces. The center, known by its French acronym CEAM, will test aspects including mobility, energy autonomy and integration of the new system into an air-defense chain.<\/p>\n Ukraine expects to receive a SAMP\/T NG system this year and will start testing it against ballistic missiles, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in March.<\/p>\n Switzerland said in March it would acquire a second model of long-range air-defense system<\/a>, preferably produced in Europe, in the face of delayed delivery of its previously ordered Patriot systems. SAMP\/T is the only European alternative to Patriot.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Netherlands rushed through a Patriot order in March to avoid losing its production spot, which the country said could push delivery back<\/a> to 2033.<\/p>\n Turkey will resume talks with Italy about buying the SAMP\/T system, including technology transfer and joint production, Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni \u015eafak reported<\/a> earlier this month, without saying where it got the information. That\u2019s after NATO air defenses in March intercepted at least four ballistic missiles from Iran that entered Turkish airspace.<\/p>\n After Turkey signed a declaration of intent with Italy and France in 2017 to strengthen cooperation in jointly producing air-defense systems, France stalled progress in response to Turkish operations in Syria in 2019. Buying the SAMP\/T system would give Turkey a NATO-compatible ballistic-missile defense capability.<\/p>\n Thales reported seven large orders with a unit value of more than \u20ac100 million in the first quarter, including the Danish SAMP\/T order, for a total amount of \u20ac1.62 billion. The company\u2019s overall first-quarter order intake rose 23% to \u20ac4.65 billion, while sales climbed 7.2% to \u20ac5.32 billion, Thales reported<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2014 Denmark will receive the French-Italian SAMP\/T NG air-defense system starting in 2028 after orders were signed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[16828,35997,4224,27,4225,26,4220,71,234,159,35998,35999,35996,36000,241],"class_list":["post-65493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-air-defense","tag-aster","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-danmark","tag-defense-news","tag-denmark","tag-dn-dnr","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-italy","tag-patriot","tag-rtx","tag-samp-t","tag-sas-2026","tag-ukraine"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116443416180475160","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}