National Advanced Surface to Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), the supply of which had been discussed since March 2022, and officially committed by the US Department of Defense in July, have reportedly finally made their wave to Ukraine. The arrival of the first systems was mentioned by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi during an interview with CBS broadcaster.
"I want to thank President Biden for a positive decision that has been already made. And to the US Congress, we received NASAMS. It's the air defense systems. But believe me, it's not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians," said Zelenskyi, as quoted by CBS News.
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He did not detail though, when exactly the Ukrainian military received the NASAMS. This could have happened more than a few days ago, and the American missiles could already have been integrated into the Ukrainian layered air defense system. As we have seen previously on the example of multiple new Western weapons, such announcements usually come through when all the preparations are already done.
Correction: on September 26, the spokesperson of the President of Ukraine Serhii Nykyforov detailed, that NASAMS had not arrived in Ukraine yet; what President Zelenskyi had been talking about to the CBS was the decision adopted by the US. The air defense systems themselves "have not physically arrived yet," he told Suspilne media.
As a reminder, at this point, we speak only of two NASAMS complexes so far, that were manufactured specifically for Ukraine by Raytheon and Kongsberg under the USAI initiative which provides for the United States to procure weapons directly from industry to support Ukraine.
The systems were made from scratch, according to the Pentagon. So if we look at the time period from the initial announcement to the actual delivery, there is a high chance someone of the current contractors has given up his place in the queue in favor of Ukraine.
Six more NASAMS Ukraine is about to receive by August 23, 2024. This is the quantity announced within the record-breaking $3 billion military assistance package for Ukraine announced on Independence Day in Ukraine on August 24.
Anyway, these two NASAMS complexes which each consist of a radar, a command and control unit, several launchers and a number of maintenance vehicles, are already a major upgrade to the current air defense capability of Ukraine.
NASAMS can intercept aerodynamic targets in the range of up to 20 kilometers with AIM-120 missiles and up to 40 km with AMRAAM ER missiles. The exact type of missiles supplied to Ukraine is, of course, not disclosed, at least for now.
Another important feature of this system is its absolute multi-channel fire control, i.e. the number of locked targets depends solely on the number of launchers available at the moment.
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