Israeli Press
Germany delivers the Drakon submarine, Israel's costliest weapon ever, Maariv reports
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Germany's TKMS shipyard handed the submarine Drakon to the Israeli navy last week, the Israeli daily Maariv reported on Tuesday, and the vessel is running sea trials before sailing for Israel within weeks.
Drakon is the sixth boat of the Dolphin class and, at some 550 million euros, the most expensive and most advanced combat platform in the Israeli military's history, the paper's military correspondent Avi Ashkenazi wrote. It will carry a crew of 55 and advanced weapons systems, and is meant to gather intelligence and allow attack, in the navy's phrase, at any point on the globe.
At the launch ceremony last year the navy's then commander, Major General David Salama, called the boat a first stone in Israel's security that "sees and is not seen", and said its arrival lengthens the military's long arm considerably.
The German fleet and Israeli security units are guarding the trials and the crew until the boat sails, according to the report.
For a Palestinian reader the delivery files under a familiar asymmetry. The same government that conditions any Gaza withdrawal on stripping Hamas of its last light weapons is adding strategic weapons in half-billion-euro increments — a build-up Israel Hayom priced this week, across the whole army, at 400 billion shekels with no funding source in the budget.
