In the fall of 2023 Germany signed a €4 billion deal for Arrow 3 missile defense system in order to make it a cornerstone of the European Sky Shield Initiative. What are the capabilities of the Arrow 3 systems? What are existing and potential future missile threats against Germany? Will Arrow 3 be useful against these threats? Timur Kadyshev and Moritz Kütt from the Research area Arms Control and New Technologies have published the article “Analyzing the Utility of Arrow 3 for European Missile Defense Using Footprint Calculations” in the Journal of Science and Global Security in which they address these questions. They present MD FCC, a new open-source software tool, developed to facilitate the analysis of missile defense through footprint estimates. Using this tool, they provide an in-depth analysis of the 2023 German Arrow 3 system procurement decision. The analysis shows that the Arrow 3 system is not likely to enhance German and European security regarding existing Russian threats and might have a defensive capability against potential medium and intermediate range missiles.
Timur Kadyshev and Moritz Kütt, Analyzing the Utility of Arrow 3 for European Missile Defense Using Footprint Calculations, https://doi.org/10.1080/08929882.2024.2444750