Israel welcomed its sixth submarine, INS Drakon, into the Navy on Thursday, as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned that Iran remains a threat despite the blows it has suffered.
“Even in these days, our eyes remain open to what is happening in Iran and among its proxies. The Iranian regime is battered and wounded, but it has not learned to change its intentions,” Zamir said at a ceremony marking the submarine’s arrival at the Haifa Naval Base.
“The induction of INS Drakon into the Israeli Navy is one of the IDF’s key force-building initiatives,” he said.
With the submarine’s arrival, the Navy has achieved an improved maritime posture and reached new heights in its operational capabilities and strength, Zamir said: “More covert, farther-reaching, deeper and more lethal.”
INS Drakon arrived in Haifa from Kiel, Germany, where it was built by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. The Dolphin II-class air-independent propulsion/diesel-electric attack submarine is the largest submarine produced in Germany since the Second World War.
President Isaac Herzog, who attended the ceremony alongside Defense Minister Israel Katz and Zamir, highlighted the symbolism of the German-Israeli cooperation behind the submarine.
“Over the past two years, soldiers of the Israeli Navy and many others involved in this immense project have been working at the port of Kiel, on German soil. This too carries a symbolism that is almost beyond comprehension,” Herzog said.
“Eighty-one years after the horrors of the Holocaust, the nation-state of the Jewish people is building, together with Germany, the crown jewel of global defense engineering,” he continued.
Herzog noted that the defense relationship runs in both directions, with Israel also exporting advanced defense systems to Germany, “thereby contributing to the security of all of Europe.”
The president said the submarine would significantly expand Israel’s ability to operate far beyond its borders.
“The Drakon, joining the Israeli Navy today, together with the submarines that will follow it, reflects the bright future of the Israeli Navy,” Herzog said.
It represents “a future of innovation, of broader operational reach, and of power at the disposal of the State of Israel, greater than ever before,” he added. “A power we will be able to deploy, and will not hesitate to deploy when necessary, even thousands of kilometers from Israel’s borders.”
Zamir also used the ceremony to highlight the IDF’s achievements against Israel’s enemies.
“The achievements led by the IDF are unprecedented,” he said, citing the elimination of senior figures “who inscribed on their banner the goal of destroying the Jewish state,” as well as the strengthening of Israel’s defensive posture and deterrence.
He also pointed to the large number of targets struck and the capture and clearing of enemy territory from which ground invasions of Israel had been planned.
Herzog concluded by highlighting the sailors who will operate the advanced submarine.
“However advanced and costly that machine may be, it is the person who will always bring victory and the ability to carry the mission through to its very end,” he said.
