France, Belgium, Estonia, Hungary and Cyprus will co-purchase Mistral surface-to-air missiles

2023-06-19 21:16:22

France, Estonia, Hungary, Belgium and Cyprus will jointly buy Mistral short-range surface-to-air missiles, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday (June 19), who calls for the strengthening of a European defense pillar. .

“It is a very good example of sovereign cooperation by Europeans on a range which is completely relevant and which was not sufficiently covered”he said at the end of a conference on air defense in Paris.

The five countries have signed a letter of intent which relates to the acquisition of “several hundred Mistral missiles”specified a presidential adviser, underlining that it was about a “first case of joint purchase of this type of equipment”.

Entering service in 1988 with the French army, the Mistral, which is developed by the European arms group MBDA, can hit targets up to six kilometers away.

Harmonize positions

Paris organized this conference to try to harmonize European positions while Berlin launched in October a “European Air Shield Initiative” (Euro Sky Shield), bringing together today 17 European countries but not France, Italy or Poland, and which provides for purchases of German, American and Israeli equipment.

This project intends to rely on the German Iris-T anti-aircraft systems for the short range, American Patriot for the medium range and American-Israeli Arrow-3 for the long range.

France, for its part, prefers to continue to bet on its own medium-range surface-to-air defense system SAMP/T MAMBA, while insisting on the problems posed by the German project.