What’s Iron Dome in German? The English version of the “Iron Dome” is certainly the best known. A name in Shakespeare’s language for a system associated with Israel instead. In the Middle East country, the surfacetoair apparatus for intercepting and launching shortrange missiles, launched from a distance of between 3 and 72 kilometers, has been in operation since 2011. The choice fell on the iron dome (kipat barzel in Hebrew). by the government after the Second Lebanon War (2006), during which Hezbollah terrorists exploded 4,000 Katiuscia rockets from the northern border, killing 44 people. Also the following year, Israel experienced a hail of 3,200 Qassam rockets, in a crescendo to Grad rockets, this time exploded by Hamas Muslims from the Gaza Strip.
The antimissile screen, a system that Israelis can use to locate and intercept missiles launched by neighbors, is also enticing to Germans. Chancellor Olaf Scholz himself explained it to the German broadcaster Ard. “We have to be aware that we have a violent neighbor to assert his interests,” said the SPD leader. The violence on the Eastern Front, as well as the Russian missiles that hit Lemberg from ships on the Black Sea, not far from the UkrainianPolish border, caused uneasiness among the Germans. Since the outbreak of war between Moscow and Kyiv a little more than a month ago, Scholz has reversed the traditional line of openness and friendship towards the Russian Federation: by sealing the RussianGerman Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Scholz has decided to support Germany’s rebirth on a military level as well level after decades of rust eating away the aircraft and armored vehicles of the Bundeswehr. Of the 100 billion that is currently being made available for national defense, the Chancellor would like to devote at least a few to the construction of an iron dome over the German sky.
Berlin would import an intermediate version between the iron dome and the “David’s Sling”, another result of Israeli engineers, calibrated for missiles with a range of up to 5,500 km. “The Israeli Arrow 3 system is a good solution,” said Andreas Schwarz, Social Democratic spokesman for the Defense Committee in the Bundestag’s Budget Committee, to Bild “We could also extend the Iron Dome to our neighboring countries. In this way we would play a key role in the security of Europe. In postwar Germany, parliament and not the government always has the last word on defense, but Scholz’s path to the missile shield has been downhill. The President of the Defense Commission, the liberal Agnes StrackZimmermann, said from Israel, where she is staying with a German delegation, that “a purchase must be made very quickly, but it must also be seriously discussed”. Nothing stands in the way of the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz: “It is a strategic answer, which is also worth considering in view of the latent threat to our country from Russia.” Roderich Kiesewetter, defense manager of the same party, expressed some reservations, according to which not Germany, but the NATO countries bordering Russia need a space shield. Bild wrote that the German skies could be protected from rocket attacks as early as 2025. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announces that it will send 6 electronic warfare naval aircraft to Germany, along with 240 military personnel, to bolster NATO’s eastern flank.