In addition to the long-awaited M2 Bradley IFVs, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will also receive missiles that will help to protect the sky, in particular to shoot down the cruise missiles of the occupiers, as Politico reports.
These are the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow air-defense missiles with radar guidance, however, there’s no information on the quantity of these missiles and in which version it will be.
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RIM-7 Sea Sparrow air-defense missiles are primarily intended for installation on a ship. As of now, the only country that has ground-based missiles of this type is Taiwan, which uses these missiles as part of the Skyguard system: five hundred such missiles the country received into service in 1991.
However, as Politico says with reference to its own sources, that the Ukrainian military managed to adjust the existing Soviet-era Buk launchers to fire the Sea Sparrow, which means that regardless of the version of the missile, the issue of launching these missiles from Soviet systems already solved.
And this is very positive news, as there are a lot of such missiles in warehouses, which will first of all solve one of the painful issues of Soviet missile shortage, especially since these missiles are capable of shooting down both airplanes and cruise missiles, which is especially relevant in in the context of russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
As for the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, this system produced by Raytheon and General Dynamic was developed back in the early 1960s based on the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile, and after a series of upgrades is an important part of the US warships air defense system.
The tactical and technical specs of this missile are as follows: it weighs about 230kg, of which 40.5kg is a high-explosive warhead. A missile length is 3.64m and a diameter of 0.203m can destroy targets at a range of 1.5 to 20-30km at an altitude of 6m to 15240m at a speed of more than 3.5M.
Defense Express notes that there is also the RIM-162 ESSM missile, which is a next level of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow and can destroy targets at a distance of up to 50km.
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