Denmark to buy anti-air defence systems from European makers

COPENHAGEN: Denmark will acquire short-range ground-based anti-air systems from manufacturers in France, Germany and Norway to protect its civilians and military installations, the defence ministry announced on Tuesday.

The Scandinavian country will buy the weapons systems, worth more than six billion kroner ($919 million), from Germany´s Diehl Defence and MBDA France, and lease them from Norway´s Kongsberg.

The systems will be placed in strategic locations across Denmark, Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told reporters. “Denmark needs to quickly build a ground-based air defence that can defend the civilian population, military targets and critical infrastructure against threats from the air,” said a ministry statement.

“The systems will gradually be operational from the end of 2025 to the start of 2027,” Lund Poulsen said. Citing an increasing threat from Russia, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in February said Denmark would allocate an extra 50 billion kroner ($7 billion) to defence spending over the next two years, urging the military to “buy, buy, buy”.

Denmark decommissioned its land-based Dehawk air defence system two decades ago, as it shifted military resources away from territorial defence to international operations following the collapse of the Soviet Union.