Canary Islands Military Chief: Air Force Ready to Counter Moroccan Threats

"Cyberattacks, terrorist attacks, aircraft hijackings for criminal or delinquent purposes. All these threats are current, real and daily. We must therefore, in this sense, be ready to fight them," said Juan Antonio Ballesta in an interview with La Provincia, on the sidelines of the 12th Canary Islands Aerospace Conference.

The General specified that these threats have been "detected for a long time in public documents such as the National Security Strategy for the year 2021". To face the Moroccan threat, the senior officer announced that "the Gran Canaria radar will be modernized and the one in Lanzarote will be replaced by the latest technology".

It is also planned "to modernize next year the alert and control group, that is to say the personnel who permanently monitor the airspace, by equipping it with new hardware systems and a very innovative software system called Airdef, developed by Indra, and by strengthening its capabilities," he explained, insisting on the need to equip the buildings with "more modern anti-corrosion systems".