Some 18 other states signed on to this German plan, which was dubbed the European Sky Shield Initiative (or ESSI for short): Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Belgium, Romania, the Netherlands, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).
Two other countries, Turkiye and Greece, are also expected to join the ESSI this year, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced his week that Poland intends to sign on to the initiative as well.
While this scheme has already been compared by some to Israel’s Iron Dome system, former officer of Swedish Armed Forces and Sweden Democrats party’s ex-chief of staff Mikael Valtersson argues that such comparison would be inaccurate.
“The Iron Dome is a fully integrated AD (air defense) system aimed at protecting Israel with several layers of AD assets. The Sky Shield is more of a coordinated procurement system aimed at maximizing cost-effectiveness by coordinated acquisition of different AD systems,” he explains.
“By doing this, interoperability and common maintenance will also be ensured. Sky Shields’ goals, are not presently, to create a common AD-system for the participating countries, but it will make such a system easier to achieve with few interoperable missile systems in the ESSI member countries,” he elaborated.
Valtersson also points out that a number of prominent European states, such as France, Italy and Spain, are not participating in the ESSI.
According to him, creating an Iron Dome analogue in Europe under the ESSI auspices would be problematic, seeing how “the participating countries are spread out all over Europe,” which would “make the common AD of their territories nearly impossible.”
“Another fact that shows that the ESSI isn't a common missile shield is the fact that neutral Switzerland and Austria are participating in the ESSI. A common missile shield would go against both countries neutrality," Valterson adds. “We also have the fact that both Greece and Türkiye have Russian missile systems, Greece has older S-300 missiles and Türkiye new S-400 missiles. Especially Türkiye's S-400 has been deemed inoperable with western AD systems for security reasons.”
Currently, it appears that Germany might be the main beneficiary of the ESSI, Valtersson suggests.
“One clear sign that Sky Shield mainly is aimed at reducing German procurement costs, by acquisition cooperation, is the fact that the only included missile systems are systems that Germany plans to have in the future, namely medium range IRIS-T SLM, long range MIM-104 Patriot and the very long range Israeli Arrow 3,” he remarks. “In contrast, the French-Italian SAMP-T missile system isn't included in Sky Shield, which is the reason that France and Italy aren't members of the ESSI.”