Romanian Parliament to consider a bill to transfer Patriot SAM to Ukraine

Romania’s Ministry of National Defense has submitted a bill to the country’s parliament on the transfer of the Patriot system to Ukraine.

According to the Romanian service of Radio Liberty, the parliament may make a decision at the fall session, which begins next week, on September 2.

The Ministry of Defense in Bucharest says it will supply one of seven Patriot systems purchased from the United States.

Four of them have already arrived in Romania – two are operational. The other three will arrive in Romania in the near future.

The draft law does not provide for an exact date for the transfer of the system to Ukraine and leaves it to the Romanian government.

Earlier, the United States, Germany, and Romania promised to send one Patriot system each, and the fourth was to be supplied with components from several countries. Italy promised to send a SAMP-T air defense missile system.

It is possible that this transfer is conditional on Romania continuing negotiations with Allies, including the United States, to obtain a similar or equivalent system to protect its national airspace.

The Romanian Armed Forces are operators of the latest versions of the PAC-2 GEM-T and Patriot PAC-3 MSE.

In addition to obtaining the latest version of the system, Romania will also take advantage of the flexible configuration architecture to upgrade its existing system to the latest version.

In 2017, Romania signed an agreement with the United States to purchase seven batteries of Patriot PAC-3+ air defense systems under the Foreign Military Sales program.

It was reported that the deal was estimated at about $4 billion, including the PAC-2 GEM-T and PAC-3 MSE anti-aircraft missiles.

Out of the seven batteries of the Patriot PAC-3+, four batteries are intended for the Romanian Air Force and three for the Romanian Army.