IRIS-T SLM Passes Bundeswehr System Certification on Crete — Heeresflugabwehrregiment 1 Stands Up on 7 December

The certification is the Luftwaffe's: Flugabwehrraketengruppe 61 has had the system since the autumn of 2024 and fired it for the first time this week, after Ukraine had used the type in combat for two years. What was new on the range was the network. SAMOC, Airbus's command post for ground-based air defence, took the German medium-range system, a Swedish Patriot battery and the Army's short-range LeFlaSys into one picture, and Sweden's certification shot ran through a German node. Pistorius: "Ein scharfer Schuss ist mehr als ein erfolgreicher Test", the proof that people, craft, technology and system work together when it matters. The Army's part was symbolic and administrative at once: the Ozelot's last Luftwaffe round and first Army round marked the branch's return, and Freuding dated the regiment.

The Army's medium-range layer begins as two fire units taken from the Luftwaffe's deliveries, not as an order in the Army's name. Heeresflugabwehrregiment 1 stands up on 7 December with LeFlaSys, a system introduced in 2001, and receives IRIS-T SLM from 2028 only because the Luftwaffe gives up two of its own early; until a budget-committee submission carries the Army as the customer, the branch grows at the Luftwaffe's expense. The test is dated: the committee's final session on the 2027 budget on 12 November, and whether an IRIS-T SLM line appears there for the Heer. Signal No. 168 recorded the regiment's date beside Rauch's count of ten nations; in June the Estonian handover counted eight, and the two added since are export customers, not a second German service.