Recently, the Spanish newspaper EL Pais, citing its own sources in the government, stated that Spain has decided to hand over to Ukraine a batch of weapons, such as Leopard 2A4 and anti-aircraft missile systems Skyguard-Aspide.
The very intention of a NATO member state to supply short-range SAMs to Ukraine could be a politically groundbreaking decision. However, it should be noted that such SAM is not a game changer.
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The Spanish doctrine in terms of own air defense relies on fighter aircraft than on anti-aircraft missile systems.
Therefore, Spain has 88 fighters such as Eurofighter Typhoon and F-5B, and only 77 SAM units, among them 13 units are Aspide systems. Provided that Spain will hand over all 13 Skyguard-Aspide SAMs to Ukraine, this will not be much in the current conditions, unfortunately.
Moreover, the authors of the Army Recognition portal claim that Spain bought for its Skyguard-Aspide only 200 Aspide missiles with a range of up to 10 kilometers and only 51 Aspide 2000 missiles with a range of up to 20 kilometers. In addition, the launchers of the Skyguard-Aspide complex are located on a towed chassis.
But there’s also a number of advantages. For example, such an anti-aircraft missile system can be used in conjunction with the 35 mm Erlikon anti-aircraft artillery system or other anti-aircraft artillery systems to work more effectively on low-altitude air targets.
In addition, Skyguard-Aspide is designed so that such a complex can operate as part of a tiered air defense system and exchange data from SAMs of other types. Finally, the Spaniards themselves point out that their system is designed more for "stationary" work and for the protection of strategic objects, such as industrial enterprises, airfields or seaports.
And perhaps the Spanish Skyguard-Aspide will be useful to Ukraine for the protection of seaports. Especially after russia again fired missiles at Ukraine’s seaports and granaries yesterday.
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