Fortune:
Over the past decade, any conversation about European missile defense largely centered on a theater missile shield. The shield relies on a series of radar installations and missile batteries installed in Poland and Romania (largely funded by the U.S.) to defend against an Iranian ballistic missile threat. However, as Russia flexes its military might, Baltic and Scandinavian nations—as well as countries in central and Western Europe—are starting to feel nervous. Most are now shifting their attention away from pan-European missile shields and towards rapidly deployable piecemeal systems that can defend an individual nation’s airspace.
This type of defense means possibly buying anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems, which currently no one in the world does like U.S. defense firms Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, says Roman Schweizer, a defense policy analyst at Guggenheim Securities. “Missile defense is one of those categories that’s on its own right now,” he says. “U.S. defense systems are the best, or at least the proven technologies that outdistance the competition in many respects.”
Heightened interest in missile technology places Raytheon and Lockheed Martin on opposite sides of a marketing battle, which has billions of dollars and decades of contracts hanging in the balance…
