Germany will send two more IRIS-T air defense systems to Ukraine by the end of the year.
German diplomat, German Ambassador to Ukraine, Martin Jäger said this during a special event on Ukraine’s Formula for Success.
According to Jäger, Germany’s support for Ukraine is largely focused on air defense, including the supply of Gepard, IRIS-T, and Patriot systems.
“We are very pleased to have been able to join this project, and now we are looking at the near future, namely winter. We will be providing additional air defense systems, both Patriot and IRIS-T, five of them are planned – I mean full-fledged separate systems with radar, command posts, etc.,” the ambassador said.
The diplomat emphasized that three IRIS-T systems are currently deployed in Ukraine, and five are planned for the end of this year.
According to Jäger, this should be a guarantee for even greater security of Ukrainian cities to protect them from Russian attacks.
The ambassador added that Germany is also making a significant contribution to strengthening the security of Ukraine’s energy systems, including support for energy capacities.
“We believe it is very important that this winter passes without outages,” the diplomat summarized.
In October 2023, Germany handed over the IRIS-T SLM air defense system to Ukraine.
It also became known that Germany’s Diehl Defense plans to significantly increase the production of IRIS-T air defense systems and missiles for them.
Diehl Defense plans to produce three to four systems in 2024 and at least eight in 2025.
At the same time, the production of missiles for IRIS-T is being tripled this year, with the company planning to produce about 400-500 missiles a year starting in 2024.