26 July 2022

Thales to supply Iraq with air-surveillance radars

by Jeremy Binnie & Shady Alkhayer

One of the posters at the Iraqi Air Defence headquarters included this photograph of the Thales Ground Master 200. (Thales)

Iraq's Air Defence Command (ADC) will receive Thales radars in addition to the Lockheed Martin TPS-77. This was announced during a ceremony marking the start of construction of a new operations centre for the military branch on 24 July.

The Iraqi Ministry of Defence (MoD) released a video of the event in which Minister of Defence Juma Inad Sadoun said the “new operations centre will be connected to the new radar system that is being imported from the French company Thales”.

Although he did not identify the types of Thales radars that have been ordered, he said Iraq had been seeking short- and medium-range systems to complement its new US-made TPS-77 long-range air surveillance radars and extend coverage across all of Iraq.

Posters at the event showed Thales radars, most prominently the Ground Master (GM) 400 and GM200, and suggested that the company is also building the air-defence operations centre.

Kurdistan 24 news station cited a Thales representative who attended the event as saying that mobile GM403 systems would be delivered in the first phase and GM200s in the second phase.

Air Defence Commander Lieutenant General Maan al-Saadi told Iraqi News Agency in February that contracts covering new advanced air-defence equipment had been signed.

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