BERLIN — Germany’s military has received the first IRIS-T SLM air defense system for its own forces after prioritizing the weapon’s production for Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022.
“A new chapter of European air defense is shaping up,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at an inauguration ceremony for the equipment on a military base in Todendorf, northern Germany. “This is, without exaggeration, about maintaining security and peace in Europe,” he added, using the occasion to defend a decision from the summer to deploy American intermediate-range missiles to Germany.
The system inaugurated on Wednesday marked the first of six IRIS-T SLMs to be delivered to the Bundeswehr. It is part of an effort by the German government to fill in a longstanding gap in the air defense capabilities of the country’s military – and the European continent more broadly.
IRIS-T has proven itself in Ukraine, the chancellor said, where “it has served as a bulwark against the countless missiles that Russia shoots at Ukraine every day,” having shot down over 250 projectiles of various sorts. Scholz claimed a hit rate of 95% and expressed hope that the system would become the backbone of European air defense beyond Germany’s borders.
Originally developed as an air-to-air missile, IRIS-T was modified for air defense with the Surface Launch Standard (SLS) variant and the Surface Launched Missile (SLM) version, which is significantly altered.
Ukraine has received four IRIS-T SLM and three IRIS-T SLS to date. A further 17 IRIS-T systems are yet to come, four of which are still scheduled to arrive in 2024.
Taking steps to strengthen European air defenses had been “long overdue,” Scholz said, pointing to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The attack sparked renewed focus on military and dense under the banner of term “Zeitenwende” in Germany – the dawn of a new era.
One of the products of this new era is the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative, which strives to coordinate the procurement and operation of air defense systems throughout the continent. First announced by Scholz just months after Russia’s invasion, 22 countries now participate – including Switzerland and Austria, which are outside of NATO, and Turkey, which is not a part of the European Union.
Another response will be the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles to Germany starting in 2026, a move announced during the NATO summit in Washington in July. This class of weapons had been banned by a Cold War-era disarmament treaty between Washington and Moscow until recently. The U.S. withdrew from the pact during the Trump administration, alleging Russian violations going back almost a decade.
“[Putin] has deployed rockets to Kaliningrad,” said Chancellor Scholz, “just 530 kilometers from Berlin. Not reacting adequately would be negligent.”
Just this past weekend, Kremlin-friendly opposition parties of the extreme right and left, critical of the missile plans, won landslide electoral victories in two east German states, Thuringia and Saxony.
Scholz emphasized that the deployment decision has been enshrined in the national security strategy since last year and will be implemented as a gesture of deterrence. “Every attack on us must mean a risk for the attacker,” he said.
