Spain will deploy a 'Nasams' anti-missile battery in Estonia

MADRID, 14 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Starting in April and for four months, Spain will deploy a 'Nasams' anti-missile battery in Estonia to protect its airspace, similar to the one sent to Latvia in June of last year.

The Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, and her Estonian counterpart, Janno Pevkur, closed the agreement in a bilateral meeting held this Tuesday on the sidelines of the NATO ministers' meeting in Brussels.

Robles already advanced a month ago that Spain was studying "very favorably" Estonia's request for the deployment of this anti-missile battery, which is accompanied by a deployment of some 80 troops.

As reported by the Estonian Ministry of Defense, the deployment will take place next April and will last for four months, while the country awaits the arrival of its own air defense systems.

"NATO's eastern flank has grown significantly over the last year. Given the need to fill this critical gap in our medium-range air defense capabilities, I am very pleased that we have reached an agreement with Spain on the deployment of its medium-range ground-based air defense system", explained the Estonian minister.

As he recalled, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania made a proposal in NATO to establish an air defense rotation model, similar to the air police mission in the Baltic that has been running for years.

Estonia also hopes to learn "tactical details" from the Spanish deployment -- which will be located at the Ämari base under the command of NATO's SACEUR Command -- for the use of a medium-range air defense system and its integration with other systems. air defense.

This system will also be linked to the one deployed for more than six months in Latvia and both will form part of NATO's eastern flank air and missile defense, reinforced since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

Since the beginning of the military offensive, Spain has increased its troops in Latvia --they have gone from 350 soldiers to 600--, multiplied the air police missions in the Baltic and the Black Sea and a permanent naval contribution to the missions of the NATO in the Mediterranean.