Defense News:
BERLIN ― Lockheed Martin and its German partner MBDA are going on the offensive in the war of words with Patriot-maker Raytheon, raising the stakes in a prized air-defense acquisition for the German military that could redefine the vendor landscape worldwide.
The trans-Atlantic venture is the incumbent for a program to replace Germany’s legacy Patriot air-defense batteries. The government in 2015 decided to model its next-generation weapon on the Medium Extended Air Defense System, designed on the premise of an open-system architecture, easy transportability, and 360-degree sensing and interceptor-launching capability.
As time nears for the companies to forge a final agreement with the Defence Ministry on the scope and cost of the new project, dubbed TLVS, competitor Raytheon has intensified its campaign for Berlin to simply stick with upgrading the existing hardware.
According to Patriot advocates, Germany runs the risk of building a defense so new that none of its neighbors have it, putting at risk the idea of interoperability in Europe. That is especially the case after some neighbor countries have opted to buy Patriot in recent years…
