Athens Preparations are already underway at the Tanagra military airport west of Athens. The first six Rafale fighter jets will land there on January 19th. Greece has ordered 18 of these aircraft from the French manufacturer Dassault, and negotiations are underway for the delivery of a further six.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis does not only want to arm his country against the increasingly aggressive neighbor Turkey. Greece would also like to profile itself as a new bastion on NATO’s southeast flank – in competition with Turkey, which is seen as an increasingly problematic ally due to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s course of confrontation. Mitsotakis is getting support from the USA and France, and not entirely unselfishly: both countries can look forward to lucrative arms contracts from Athens.
The delivery of the fighter jets is just the beginning. The US armaments company Lockheed Martin is currently working with Hellenic Aerospace on an order to modernize 84 older F-16 fighter jets. Lockheed Martin is also hoping for a Greek order for its state-of-the-art fighter, the F-35 stealth jet.
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Greece is also arming itself at sea. In 2025, the Navy expects the delivery of two Belharra frigates from the French armaments company Naval Group. A third ship will follow in 2026. Greece is also planning to procure four corvettes. Four older frigates of the German type MEKO are to be modernized.
To strengthen its navy, Greece has ordered seven MH-60R helicopters from the US manufacturer Sikorsky. The first two machines are expected in 2022. The number of crews is also growing: Greece will hire 15,000 new professional soldiers by 2025, and military service was extended from nine to twelve months this year.
Greece concludes military cooperation agreements
The government is flanking the armaments program with a series of bilateral agreements on military cooperation: In January, Athens and Israel agreed to set up a military flying school near Kalamata on the Peloponnese peninsula.
At the end of September, Greece and France signed an agreement on a strategic partnership and mutual military assistance, expressly also in the event of an attack from within NATO – that sounds like it was being applied to Turkey.
In mid-October, Athens and Washington signed a five-year military cooperation agreement. It secures the US the use of additional military bases in Greece. An important new base is the northern Greek port of Alexandroupoli, a few kilometers from the Turkish border. The USA is developing the port into a logistics hub for military maneuvers in the Black Sea countries of Bulgaria and Romania.
Turkey is seen as an increasingly problematic ally because of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s course of confrontation.
(Photo: via REUTERS)
With the new aircraft and warships, Greece wants to trump Turkey above all in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. Both neighboring countries have been fighting over sovereign rights and economic zones for years. The more the currency and economic crisis in Turkey intensifies, the more aggressive the tones from Ankara become.
Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu said that Turkey would enforce its interests “on the battlefield if necessary”. The Turkish armed forces are numerically clearly superior to the Greek. The fighter jets are almost tied: Turkey has 207 fighter jets, Greece 189. However, the Turkish air forces are only operational to a limited extent because there is still a shortage of pilots due to the “purges” after the attempted coup in summer 2016.
According to Western military experts, Greece can gain air superiority in the Aegean with the new fighter jets. Above all, a possible procurement of F-35s is considered a “game changer”.
Spicy: Turkey, which originally ordered 100 machines and was a production partner of the F-35 program, has to do without the aircraft. The US government stopped the delivery of the jets that had already been paid for after Erdogan ordered S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in Russia.
The Russian missiles not only poisoned the relationship between Washington and Ankara, but also sowed new doubts in NATO about the reliability of its ally Turkey. Greece tries to use that for itself.
Greece as an alternative to Turkey
Mitsotakis presents his country as a reliable alternative to Turkey. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Greece as a “credible partner” and “pillar of stability” in the eastern Mediterranean.
Mitsotakis presents his country as a reliable alternative to Turkey.
(Photo: Reuters)
The US news portal Real Clear Defense (RCD), which is close to the Pentagon, writes that Greece could become the new bulwark on the south-eastern flank of the Alliance and thus take on a role that was previously intended for Turkey. Erdogan doesn’t like that. He recently complained that all of Greece was “one American base”.
The Greek armament goes for the money. This year the country has already quintupled its spending on armaments programs from 500 million to 2.5 billion euros. Expenditure is expected to rise to 3.36 billion in 2022.
Further payments will be due in the next few years. The Rafale jets already ordered, the Belharra frigates and the corvettes alone cost around 8.5 billion euros, not counting the F-35.
Despite the immense armaments spending, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras praised fiscal discipline. This year, the state budget still showed a deficit of almost ten percent of gross domestic product due to the corona burden. But from 2023 Greece wants to generate primary surpluses again.
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