Greece’s State Council for Foreign Affairs and Defence has given the green light to the purchase of the “Achilles Shield” air defence system, in a move reported to reflect the growing, if informal, convergence of defence interests between Athens, Nicosia and Jerusalem — an alignment from which Greece and the Republic of Cyprus are said to stand to benefit most.
The Cypriot newspaper Fileleftheros, in a report headlined “What Does Achilles Shield Change… A €3.5 Billion System and the Greece-Israel-Cyprus Alliance,” described the €5.3 billion project not as a scaled-up version of Israel’s Iron Dome, but as an integrated network drawing together new and existing assets from the Greek Army, Air Force and Navy, including Patriot batteries, fighter jets, naval platforms and sensor systems.
At the heart of the system, according to the report, will be the Spyder air defence system, alongside Barak MX interceptors and ELM-2084 radars — the latter often likened to Israel’s “David’s Sling” system. The shield is expected to be fully operational within 35 months, with a quarter of the project’s manufacturing to take place in Greece.
The newspaper noted that trilateral defence cooperation between Cyprus, Greece and Israel is set to intensify over the course of 2026, with plans for expanded air and naval exercises, joint special forces training, and a deeper transfer of Israeli expertise on both conventional and asymmetric threats.
Cyprus has already taken delivery of the Israeli-made Barak MX system, which is now being incorporated into the National Guard’s arsenal — and, by extension, into the wider architecture of the Greek shield.
The report was careful to stress that the cooperation does not amount to a formal alliance, and stops short of altering the underlying military balance with Turkey.
Israel, it noted, would not go to war on behalf of Greece or Cyprus. What has shifted, the newspaper argued, is more subtle: this defense formation takes away from Türkiye the assurance that it can militarily isolate Nicosia, catch Greece off guard, or operate in the Eastern Mediterranean without taking Israel’s capabilities into account.
