The Netherlands will deploy a Patriot air protection unit to NATO ally Lithuania as a part of a summer season joint air protection train, the Dutch Protection Ministry introduced this week.
The several-week-long drill is crucial to strengthen air defenses on the japanese flank, the Dutch army claimed in a press launch on Thursday. The said aim is to check the flexibility of NATO troops to shortly transport and deploy air defenses inside a deployment space. The choice to deploy a US-made system close to the Russian border “contributes to the readiness of NATO air protection,” Dutch Protection Minister Kajsa Ollongren claimed within the launch.
Lithuania welcomed the train as good news, noting the Dutch shall be coaching in no-notice redeployment of air protection items alongside the Lithuanian armed forces. The US-led army bloc’s Enhanced Ahead Presence forces are “very important for the Baltic states’ safety,” Protection Minister Laurynas Kasciunas mentioned on Friday, calling for extra deployments and workout routines of NATO plane and ground-based air protection programs to Lithuania.
It’s unclear to what extent the Dutch Patriot deployment in Lithuania will prolong. A single battery of the Patriot air protection system consists of a number of truck-mounted items, together with energy, radar, antenna, engagement management and different assist autos, in addition to as much as eight launchers with interceptor missiles.
The Netherlands has been one of many few international locations to provide two of their Patriot launchers to Ukraine, together with the US and Germany who every despatched a full battery.
The deployment will comply with NATO’s ongoing largest army train in a long time, Steadfast Defender 2024, which options some 90,000 troops, greater than a thousand fight autos, over 50 naval vessels, 80 helicopters, drones and fighter jets from all 32 member states.
Russia has said the US-led army bloc’s elevated army spending and ramping army drills reveal its “more and more aggressive nature.” The drills are practising a “state of affairs of armed confrontation with Russia,” growing tensions and destabilizing the scenario on this planet, the Russian Safety Council secretary Nikolay Patrushev mentioned early in March.
Patrushev described NATO as “an essential software of Washington’s affect on different international locations,” which, over the 75 years of its existence as a said guarantor of peace and democracy “unleashed greater than 100 wars and army conflicts world wide and is preparing for extra.”
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