Winter draws near in Ukraine, and as long as the Russian Federation is expected to once again start a missile shelling campaign aimed at Ukraine's electricity and heating supply infrastructure, countermeasures are being prepared as well.
The United States Department of Defense commenced the FrankenSAM project: to gather all currently available air defense systems from around the world and hand them over to Ukrainian forces and/or adapt Soviet-style missile launchers to Western missiles. This project became especially important because an internal dispute has left the Congress without a clear vision on the format of further financial and military assistance to Ukraine, Associated Press notes.
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Also, the FrankenSAM is purposed not only to deliver all air defense equipment possible to Ukraine as quickly as possible; on top of that, it tries to achieve that by creating new air defense systems based on the existing technological solutions.
The journalists shed some light on two programs within the FrankenSAM, revealing a) what will the recently announced U.S.-Ukrainian jointly created air defense system look like, and b) the configuration of the yet undisclosed system for utilizing AIM-9M air-to-air missiles, the existence of which was announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin the other day.
As for the former, AP News says with reference to a senior U.S. defense official that Ukraine is working together with the U.S. engineers on adaptation of the Soviet-era Buk missile system to fire the AIM-7. The details remain non-public, although the first mentions of the American specialists intending to tinker with the Buk so it could launch AIM-7 date back to January 2023.
At that time, some profile media provided "suggestions" on how to adapt the old Soviet self-propelled launcher for the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow – a version of AIM-7 naval ships can deploy. Turns out, the foundation has already been laid by Poland and the Czech Republic who both tried to find a way to use Western missiles with available equipment.
However, instead of Buk systems, Polish and Czech technicians used another vehicle, the Kub system, as the basis for their experiment. Apparently, the Ukrainian-American team will had to figure out on their own how to adjust the Buk system specifically.
Another important detail mentioned in the article is that the unspecified "new air defense system" for Ukraine that can deploy AIM-9M missiles will be produced by the United States alone. This rules out any options with adapted Strela-10 or Osa-AKM launchers.
"U.S. has been able to improvise and build a new missile launcher from radars and other parts contributed by allies and partners. The system will be able to launch AIM-9M Sidewinder missiles," Associated Press writes.
Instead, more likely that the anticipated short-range system will be closer to the improvised British launcher for firing the AIM-132 ASRAAM, or the old MIM-72 Chaparral of US design.
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