German Navy Fires Two IAI LORA Ballistic Missiles From the Sachsen-Anhalt's Flight Deck

Two frigates deployed for the trial; IAI describes the installation as a command trailer and a launcher placed on the ship, and says both rounds flew their course and struck the target. The published figures are IAI's: 5.2 metres, 62.3 centimetres in diameter, 1.6 tonnes, a quasi-ballistic trajectory, GNSS/INS guidance with a circular error probable of ten metres, and under ten minutes from decision to launch against a target of known position. IAI states the range of the ground- and ship-launched variant as 90 to 430 kilometres. dpa's figure of more than 500 weapons to be procured carries no attribution in its own reporting and is repeated here on the same basis — a navy spokesman's account of preparations, not a published requirement.

Kaack's language was the strongest part of the release: the shot means "we have written naval history", the system "can be used successfully from our units and the possible range exceeds anything we have known so far", and the trial opens "a new chapter in deterrence and defence readiness at sea" — phrases this dispatch quotes rather than adopts. The same morning TKMS reported that INS Drakon, the third Dolphin-class boat built for Israel with air-independent propulsion, left Kiel for Israel after handover.

The navy's funded route to land attack from the sea still runs through launch cells the Sachsen-Anhalt does not carry. The F127 programme would field 96 Mk 41 cells per hull, first ship no earlier than 2034 and still under ministry examination against a leaked EUR 40 billion figure; Tuesday night's shot used two deck-mounted canisters on a hull the navy already has, from a supplier absent from the ground-launched plan reported in August. Signal No. 137 logged dpa's sentence as a reported intent to buy, not a programme — the budget week opening Tuesday is the earliest place a requirement, a hull assignment or a timetable could appear.