ATHENS \u2014 Greece has approved the purchase of a multi-layer air defense system worth up to \u20ac3.5 billion ($4 billion) from Israel, several types of drones and Embraer\u2019s C-390 military transport aircraft, its defense minister said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s security council, KYSEA, gave its initial approval earlier this year and approved the procurement contracts on Thursday, Nikos Dendias told journalists.<\/p>\n
Greece wants to build a multi-layer anti-ballistic, anti-aircraft and anti-drone system, called \u201cAchilles Shield,\u201d with Israeli radars and missiles from Rafael and IAI defense companies forming the core of the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be ready and fully operational within 35 months, starting from today,\u201d said Nikos Dendias, adding that companies in Greece will produce at least 25% of the system.<\/p>\n
Greece, which currently uses U.S. Patriot and old Russian S-300 systems to protect its airspace, plans to spend about \u20ac28 billion by 2036 to modernize its armed forces.<\/p>\n
This includes buying up to 40 new F-35 fighter jets from the United States and frigates from France and Italy.<\/p>\n
Dendias said that KYSEA had also approved the purchase of three C-390 military transport aircraft, 10 British-built VICTA mini-submarines for special operations, U.S. V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Heron UAVs from Israel.<\/p>\n
Greece spends nearly 3.5% of its gross domestic product on defense, a higher proportion than many fellow NATO countries, due to its long-standing dispute with Turkey. <\/p>\n
With strong economic and diplomatic ties, Greece and Israel operate an air training centre on Greek territory, hold joint military annual drills and cooperate on anti-drone systems and cybersecurity. <\/p>\n
Last year, Athens bought 36 Israeli-made rocket artillery systems for about \u20ac650 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS \u2014 Greece has approved the purchase of a multi-layer air defense system worth up to \u20ac3.5 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[387,1530,11960,7078,2930,307,55748,37,712,2926],"class_list":["post-220216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-air-defense","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-defense-spending","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-greece","tag-interceptors","tag-israel","tag-missiles","tag-unmanned"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116971060800056721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}