The Minister of Defense continues to talk about the decisions taken by the authorities in the context of the war in Ukraine, Russia's actions forcing our country to rethink its defense strategy, and to allocate more money from the GDP for the army, which will be used to purchase new equipment .
The Minister of Defense talks below about this, but also about the Iron Dome anti-missile shield that Germany is buying, also talking about its efficiency, but also about the possibility that the purchase of shields of this kind can be made at the level of several NATO countries for eastern flank.
"Romania is certainly interested in increasing its security from the perspective of the anti-missile shield, I saw Germany's intention, which is very interesting from the perspective of the acquisition of Iron Dome. It is a modern missile system, a mobile system, compared to the Deveselu shield, it is a mobile system that can defend a battery on 150 km2.
It is an anti-missile shield for unguided ones, and it is important because it saves money in the sense that it can detect, including analyzing both the size and the trajectory, if the missile reaches a populated or unpopulated area. Probably what Germany is doing will be part of a collective procurement project, although this was not discussed.
There is an idea that Romania has recently supported, that of making joint, complementary acquisitions for the eastern flank, and it is probably one of the ideas of the future. It is an anti-missile shield, it is not a shield for other types of attacks (n. ed. regarding nuclear attacks), but it is an effective shield, which was demonstrated in 2012 and 2014, when Israel used it.
For now, we would propose, the President of Romania proposed, probably that next year the Parliament will approve the request from the GDP. There is a very long list of acquisitions that we have from the Romanian Army 2040 strategic document, this means that we have a reporting threshold and are endowed in several stages.
Obviously, if we have extra money, first of all, we will increase the percentage of the endowment budget, which is the main thing. Of course, we will also bring here projects that were supposed to start in 2027, or in 2030, we will bring them closer, if we succeed. It matters what amounts we will have, and there are other important things, specifically the potential of our defense industry."
