Athens is not simply buying David's Sling, Spyder and Barak MX. For the first time, it is creating a single, multi-layered network that will see, assess
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The Israeli model cannot simply be copied wholesale. Geography is perhaps the biggest difference. Israel is a narrow, relatively compact strip of land, where critical centres (metropolitan areas, military bases, energy facilities and infrastructure) can be organised within a more clearly defined space. Greece, by contrast, has a large mainland area, mountainous terrain, extensive sea zones and hundreds of inhabited islands. There can therefore be no single dome placed over the entire country.
Feferman believes this changes the layout rather than the underlying philosophy. Greek authorities will need to decide which points constitute critical nodes: military and air bases, airports, ports, energy facilities, key civilian infrastructure, major population centres and, of course, specific islands. Different air defence hubs will then be built around these points, though they will not function as isolated pockets of technology.
Everything has to feed back into the same operational picture. The point, he stresses, is to avoid gaps between different capabilities, while also avoiding a situation where two or three systems end up expending valuable munitions against the same threat.
This is where a shift emerges that has more to do with twenty-first century warfare than with traditional Greek thinking on air defence. The war in Ukraine, the attacks in the Red Sea and, above all, Israel’s successive conflicts have shown that the most expensive missile is not always the most significant threat. A large-scale attack using dozens or hundreds of far cheaper drones can simply be designed to saturate the defence and exhaust interceptor stockpiles. The problem, then, is also an economic one. It makes little sense to shoot down a target worth a few thousand euros with a missile costing hundreds of thousands, when a cheaper and equally safe alternative exists.
An incoming missile or drone can be identified by the network, its likely target area calculated, and the system can then help the operator decide whether it needs to be intercepted, which weapon should be used, or whether its trajectory does not justify expending a valuable interceptor. Artificial intelligence, he stresses, speeds up this process but does not replace the human element. “There is a human element at the end,” he says, particularly when available munitions are limited and choices have to be made.
Israel’s experience adds a second dimension here that is often missing from discussions about interceptors: passive defence. Even the best systems do not achieve an absolute success rate. Israel therefore invested heavily in an extensive population warning system, capable of narrowing an alert down to specific cities and, in some cases, to specific areas within a city.
Feferman points out that public education, shelters and the ability of the population to know within minutes what to do are all part of the same defence equation. For Greece, then, the “Shield” is gradually opening up a discussion that goes beyond military bases: how civil protection should be organised in the face of a modern missile attack or mass drone assault.
