German army activates air-defence system, citing Russia threat

TODENDORF, Germany – Germany’s military put a first Iris-T air-defence system into service on its own soil on Sept 4 having delivered several of them to war-torn Ukraine to intercept Russian rockets, drones and missiles.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the surface-to-air system was part of a build-up of German and European defences launched after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Ukraine invasion in 2022.

“Russia has been massively rearming for many years, especially in the field of rockets and cruise missiles,” Mr Scholz said, at the inauguration ceremony at a base in Todendorf, near the northern city of Hamburg.

President Putin had broken disarmament treaties and “deployed missiles as far as Kaliningrad”, a Russian exclave located some 530km from Berlin, he added.

“It would be negligent not to respond to this appropriately,” the chancellor said.

“A failure to act would put peace at risk. I will not allow that.”

Mr Scholz, who was joined by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, said the system was part of the European Sky Shield Initiative, which also includes long-range defences against ballistic missiles.

The German military has ordered six of the Iris-T SLM systems at a total cost of €950 million (S$1.3 billion) from manufacturer Diehl Defence, to be delivered by May 2027.

Iris-T success in Ukraine

Germany, the second-largest contributor of military aid to Ukraine after the US, has already supplied four Iris-T SLM systems to Ukraine and pledged another eight.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov was visiting Germany on Sept 4, a day after a Russian missile attack killed at least 51 people in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, one of the single deadliest bombardments of the war.