THE AGREEMENT between the government and the manufacturing companies MBDA and Oerlikon to upgrade our Mistral and Aspide anti-aircraft missile systems will be put into effect this week. The upgrades will increase the range of the Mistral from five to 6.4 kilometres and of the Aspide from 13 to 16 km, and will cost £61 million.
Two things must be borne in mind in relation to this project. First, the previous government had been on the verge of cancelling the upgrade because developments in the Cyprus problem and the prospect of a settlement made it unnecessary from a military point of view and misguided from a political one. Second, the initiative for again raising the issue of the missile upgrade was undertaken by the AKEL leadership, which vociferously demanded that the defence minister go ahead with it. And when former president George Vassiliou tried to raise the issue at a National Council meeting, President Tassos Papadopoulos — in yet another illustration of his subjugation to the AKEL leadership — did not allow any discussion, saying that he considered the matter closed.
There are three aspects to the issue — political, economic and military. As for the first, it has already been pointed out that the decision, at this specific time, was further proof of the bad faith which marks the behaviour of the Papadopoulos-Christofias government. At a time when the United Nations and the international community were working towards finding a solution so a united Cyprus could enter the European Union, as a member of which it would not need surface-to-air missiles, the government was sending the message that it remained stuck to a third world mentality of idiotic and irresponsible belligerence (confined, of course, to defiant sloganeering).
The decision makes even less sense from the economic point of view, though it does highlight the incoherence that has become this government’s stock in trade. This is the government that squanders £61 million of the taxpayer’s money on a totally unnecessary missile upgrade, while imposing spending cuts on ministries. As part of the savings drive, ministries have been forced to make cuts in their budgets for travelling, stationery etc., cuts which saved two or three million pounds from next year’s budget.
But the decision scales new heights of absurdity when viewed from the purely military perspective. What do we really have to gain from increasing the range of our missiles by 16 or 20 per cent? Will this help us win a war and kick the Turkish occupying troops out of Cyprus? Or would it allow us to shoot down an extra plane in the event of hostilities? If one thing has been proved beyond reasonable doubt in the military conflicts of the past 20 years, it is that anti-aircraft missiles are totally ineffective in providing air-cover.
The Syrian army, for instance, has several batteries of Russian-made SAM 3 missiles deployed in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Not only have these missiles never hit an Israeli fighter, but their launchers have repeatedly been hit by rockets fired by fighters which were neither seen nor heard. Yugoslavia was also supposed to have strong air defence systems, yet it failed to bring down a single plane during the thousands of sorties by NATO bombers over the country. The only aircraft hit was a Stealth fighter-bomber hit by bullets fired by a machine-gun.
Modern fighter-bomber aircraft can carry out precision strikes from heights of 15,000 feet and from distances of several kilometres away from their target. They cannot be downed by the missiles we have bought for the National Guard for tens of millions of pounds. I mention this so that the taxpayer can understand what this myth about ‘defence capability’ is all about. It is the most costly of all the myths sold to us over the past 30 years by our political leadership. The only people who benefit from the ongoing defence myth are the arms dealers, their agents in Cyprus and the assortment of hangers-on who are involved in the defence deals circuit, which offers huge back-handers.
Our state spends almost £300 million every year perpetuating the myth about the alleged bolstering of our defence capability, without this being of any help. If there were another full scale military conflict in Cyprus, the result would be a foregone conclusion — the island would be swallowed up by Turkey.
Interestingly, in recent weeks the government has tried to alarm people by talking about the supposedly exorbitant cost of a possible settlement. But just the £300 million a year that we would save in the event of a settlement could, to a large extent, finance the cost of that solution.
