On Friday, July 1, the Spanish army deployed a NASAMS air defense missile system in Latvia in response to the need to strengthen the defense capabilities of the Baltic region after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An important component of NATO’s deterrence and defense posture is a military presence in the eastern part of Alliance territory. In recent years, Allies have enhanced NATO’s forward presence by establishing multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. Following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Allies agreed to establish four more multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. This brings the total number of multinational battlegroups to eight, extending all along NATO’s eastern flank – from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.
Also on Friday, reports emerged that Germany is considering buying a missile defense system from Israel or the United States to defend against threats including Russian Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. The Iskander missiles can reach almost all of western Europe and there is no missile shield in place to protect against this threat, Germany’s chief of defense Eberhard Zorn said in an interview published on Saturday. He did not specify the names of the systems but was most likely referring to Arrow 3 from Israel and THAAD from the U.S.
Early Friday morning, Russian missile attacks on residential areas in a coastal town near the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed at least 19 people, authorities reported, a day after Russian forces withdrew from a strategic Black Sea island. Video of the pre-dawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, located about 31 miles southwest of Odesa. The Ukrainian president’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers struck an apartment building and two campsites.
Friday evening, an Atlas V rocket lifted off from a pad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying a missile-warning satellite and another spacecraft to orbit. One of the two spacecraft, called the Wide Field of View (WFOV) satellite, is the Space Force Space System Command's testing platform for a new generation of missile-surveillance technology. The other is a satellite bus hosting a number of technology demonstrations for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Current space-deployed weapons tracking systems focus on ballistic missiles, which have limited maneuverability. The DoD has created a new system, the Overhead Persistent Infrared program (OPIR), to track next-generation hypersonic threats, such as the Kinzhal. WFOV is the testbed for those technologies.
On Saturday, July 2, The Israeli military said it shot down three unmanned aircraft launched by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah heading toward an area where an Israeli gas platform was recently installed in the Mediterranean Sea. The launch of the aircraft appeared to be an attempt by Hezbollah to influence U.S.-brokered negotiations between Israel and Lebanon over their maritime border, an area that is rich in natural gas. Hezbollah issued a short statement, confirming it had launched three unarmed drones toward the disputed maritime issue over the Karish field on a reconnaissance mission.
