Spain agreed to provide its Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the briefing concluding the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels, on October 13, Euromaidan Press reports.
"NATO Allies provide Ukraine with advanced systems, including artillery, air defense and armored vehicles. And I welcome today’s announcement by Spain of four Hawk missile launchers to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses – in addition to what Allies have provided in recent days. I thank Allies for their significant contributions, and I call on them to continue to step up their support,” the NATO Secretary-General said.
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Ukraine has been asking to provide these missiles for a while, and there’s a reason – the significant advantage making the Hawk a good choice for the Ukrainian army to adopt.
Unlike the MIM 104 Patriot which also caught Ukraine’s attention and cost about a billion USD per fire unit, the MIM-23 "Hawk" is a missile of the previous generation. At some point in time, it was the main anti-aircraft system of the USA and NATO countries during almost the entire Cold War, and was sold in huge numbers. In the United States, it was decommissioned in the 1990s, but it remains in service with about two dozen countries.
Although the MIM-23 Hawk was put into service back in 1960, it has seen four major modernizations since then. In particular, one of the last massive upgrades, the Phase III, was introduced in the 1990s, in fact, just before the Hawk got decommissioned. The last widespread modernization included digitalization of the complex which enabled the Hawk system to simultaneously intercept several targets and destroy them at low altitudes.
The computerization of the MIM-23 Hawk opened doors to further modernization of this air defense system, a.k.a. the Hawk XXI, which is currently in service with Turkiye. Its key feature is the integration of the modern AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar, which is also used in the modern NASAMS air defense system, as well as the general digitalization of all systems of the Hawk.
At the same time, the firepower of the Hawk complex continued to rely on the MIM-23 anti-aircraft missile, which was constantly updated and modernized till the mid-90s.
We still don’t know what configuration of radar systems will be in the Hawks transferred to Ukraine. So the only thing we can say about their specifics for sure is the specs of the MIM-23 missile: target destruction range is up to 45-50 km, target height’s up to 20 km, and missile speed is Mach 2.4. The missile is guided to the target by a semi-active homing head.
But the most important advantage of this complex lies precisely in the fact that there were more than 40,000 of these missiles produced overall – it means that Ukraine is highly unlikely to suffer from a shortage of those in the foreseeable future. However, the obvious disadvantage of the MIM-23 Hawk is that it was decommissioned and put into storage. And this points to the need for its restoration to a combat-capable shape.
Also, as mentioned the older version of the Hawk Ukraine receives, the more radar systems it will include and the more difficult it will be to restore and maintain. For example, the 1970s "Improved Hawk" variant includes: an AN/MPQ-46 target illumination radar, an AN/MPQ-50 targeting radar, an AN/MPQ-51 radar rangefinder, an AN/MPQ-48 low-altitude target detection radar, an AN/TSW-8 data processing and command point, an AN/MPQ-48 vanguard radar post, an AN/MSW-11 control post, and finally the three M192 launchers with three anti-aircraft missiles each.
For comparison, the newer Hawk XXI version consists of: a command post, an AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel observation radar, an AN/MPQ-62 "low-altitude" radar, one or two AN/MPQ-61 illumination radars, and several launchers. Note that the number of targets that can be locked at the same time depends on the number of illumination radars.
Anyway, if we are talking about the need to intercept such targets as cruise missiles and kamikaze drones, and not use this air defense system in the role of an advanced air defense system in the front-line area, then the MIM-23 Hawk can quite cope with this task.
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