German lawmakers released advance payments of up to 560 million euros on Wednesday ahead of a planned purchase of the Israel-built Arrow 3 missile defence system for almost 4 billion euros in total.

Arrow 3 is designed to intercept ballistic missiles outside of the earth’s atmosphere. It is the top layer of Israel’s missile defence array, which extends from Iron Dome to Arrow 3.

Berlin aims to strike a Government-to-Government (G2G) deal with Israel on the purchase of the Arrow 3 system at the end of the year, according to procurement documents by the Finance Ministry.

Also read: Arrow 3 | Flight test of Israeli missile completed successfully – VIDEO

Germany will lose part or all of its advance payments should the deal fail, according to the papers, as the money would be used to compensate Israel for costs incurred by then.

The German Air Force is supposed to receive Arrow 3, which will cost about one billion euros more than originally planned, by the fourth quarter of 2025.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has laid bare a shortage of ground-based air defence systems such as Raytheon’s Patriot units or the more recently developed IRIS-T in many Western nations.

Germany also approved about 950 million euros for the purchase of six German Iris-T SLM air defence systems.

Also read: IRIS-T SLM GBAD system | Egypt’s choice to boost air defence – PHOTOS & VIDEO