Senior officials from the Rafael company arrived in Athens last week, for a meeting with the high command of the Greek Air Force, reports the “Bulgarian Military” website. At the center of the meeting, according to the report, the “Spider” air defense system was presented by Micha Ron, an executive at Rafael.
The Greek interest was expressed about two and a half months after American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken informed Athens that the sale of 40 F-35 fighter jets had been approved. According to estimates, the total price is about 8.6 billion euros.
At the same time, Turkey has been getting closer to the Biden administration in recent months – when on May 9, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to hold a first meeting with Biden in Washington. Thanks to the approval of Sweden’s accession to NATO, Turkey is expected to purchase F-16 aircraft and upgrade packages for the existing aircraft from the US for 20 billion dollars. Although these are not F-35 aircraft, which the Turks were excluded from the project due to the purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia, they are reinforcements for Greece’s most threatening neighbor.
Spyder, which according to the report was presented by Rafael, is an advanced air defense system, which is in operational use in several armies around the world, including the Czech Republic, and provides air defense solutions at different ranges and against a variety of aerial threats, including drones, airplanes, helicopters and long-range ballistic missiles The system intercepts the threats using two families of interceptors made by Raphael – PYTHON and Derby.
A complete air defense system
In recent months, Rafael introduced a new configuration for the Spider system – the All in One configuration – which offers a complete air defense system that includes: an integral radar, a dedicated electro-optical payload, an advanced command and control system and Python and Derby interceptors, all installed on just one vehicle. Last January, Rafael, in cooperation with the Defense Ministry’s Ministry of Defense, completed a successful test of the Spider system in the All-in-One configuration.
This configuration is a solution for optimal air defense for point defense or as air defense against maneuvering forces; This, as part of a spider battery or in an independent deployment and operated by a minimal team of operators. In an experiment conducted in January in Israel, several scenarios simulating existing and future threats were tested, during which the Spider system, in its new configuration, intercepted a UAV in a challenging operational scenario with a direct and accurate hit.
We note that alongside the fighter jets that Turkey depends on imports, it has a very advanced drone manufacturing industry, and is considered, among other things, to be Ukraine’s main drone supplier. In fact, thanks to the war between Russia and Ukraine, there has been an increasing demand for drones such as the Beiractor TB2 which is very active in the Ukrainian military military activity, or the Beiractor Akinji.
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