The German lawmakers on Wednesday announced plans to purchase Israel’s Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile system.
The German Bundestag earmarked 560 million € ($607 million) ahead of a possible purchase of an Arrow-3 missile defense system for almost 4 billion euros ($4.30 billion) in total, according to Reuters.
The Arrow-3 is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside of the earth’s atmosphere.
Israel Aerospace Industries, which is the prime contractor of the system, has been developing Arrow 3 together with Boeing since 2008 with considerable financial and other support from the U.S. government.
Berlin aims to strike a government-to-government deal with Israel on the purchase of the Arrow-3 system at the end of the year, according to procurement documents by the finance ministry that were prepared for parliament.
The German air force is supposed to take delivery of Arrow-3 by the fourth quarter of 2025.
