The US asks Middle East countries to quickly transfer NASAMS to Ukraine to strengthen air defense

Raytheon Technologies' CEO, Greg Hayes, told American media about this. The company, jointly with the Norwegian group Kongsberg, produces NASAMS.

According to Hayes, the task is to send air defense systems currently deployed in Middle Eastern countries to Kyiv within the next three to six months. Instead, the US will send new NASAMS to the region over the next 24 months:

"There are NASAMS deployed across the Middle East, and some of our NATO allies and we are actually working with a couple of Middle Eastern countries that currently employ NASAMS and trying to direct those back up to Ukraine," Hayes said.

Such agreements should save time for Ukraine, so that the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not have to wait two years for new systems from Raytheon.

Hayes noted that new air defense systems take so long to build because of the time it takes to procure electronic components and manufacture missile engines. And therefore, it is faster to transfer air defense systems from the Middle East than to produce new NASAMS in the USA.

NASAMS is currently in service with the United States or NATO countries: Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain. In the Middle East, Oman and Qatar have these complexes. They are also used by Finland, Australia, Chile, and Indonesia.