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"The Netherlands is contributing towards a missile shield," announces NRC Handelsblad. On September 26, the country’s minister of defence announced the installation of the Smart-L radar system on the Netherlands’ four frigates and in its air defence command. These systems are part of NATO’s ALTBMD (Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence), intended to protect the territory of Europe from incoming hostile missiles.
The range of the ultra-modern systems is very high: two frigates, one in the Baltic Sea and one in the Mediterranean, would be enough to cover all of Europe’s airspace. But the project has a price: for the Netherlands, 250 million euros, which be set off against “savings for the ministry of one billion euros" writes the daily. The Netherlands is "the first European country in NATO to contribute significantly" to NATO’s missile shield over the continent, which is independent of the shield that the United States has installed in Romania, Poland and Turkey.
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