There are few air defense systems in the world to destroy Iranian ballistic missiles, but Ukraine needs them - Serhiy Zgurets column

Countering Iranian ballistic missiles

When we talk about threats in the field of air defense, it is necessary to understand how much we have the ability to counter, in particular, Iranian ballistic missiles. We are talking about purchasing two types of these weapons. One type of missile - Fateh-110 - has a range of up to 300 km, the other - Zolfaghar - has a range of up to 700 km. Head of Ukrainian military intelligence, and then spokesman of Ukrainian Air Forces Command told that we actually have a small amount of arsenals to intercept such ballistic missiles.

Ihor Romanenko, retired lieutenant general, former deputy chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that basic air defense systems in Ukrainian Air Forces currently serve to cover infrastructure facilities, cities i.e. These are Soviet S-300 and Buk-M1 complexes. They were developed to destroy aerodynamic targets, which include airplanes, helicopters, cruise missiles, and UAVs. Special feature of ballistic missiles is their trajectory, and as a rule, they are hypersonic, i.e. they have several speeds of sound - waves. Russian ballistic Iskanders belong to these, because Iskander-M can be launched both as a ballistic missile and as a cruise missile. With cruise missiles, there is probability of destroying them, and Kinzhals – Iskanders, which are fixed on the MiG-31 (a high-speed fighter jet) - more difficult. There are problems in determining appropriate range so that the air defense system has enough time to identify a target to guide an anti-missile and launch it.  These anti-missile systems should generally have a speed close to missiles they destroy. Currently, there are no such complexes in Ukraine. Therefore, these are separate problems and means. We need to see how it will be possible to work on it with NASAMS and IRIS-T, but both systems are very successful, modern, designed to destroy aeroballistic targets and they have good air-to-air missiles. Although Franco-Italian SAMP-T or Mamba can destroy ballistic missiles in the theater of war, at a range of 10 km, and is also an air-to-air missile, but it has an accelerator. It is a very deeply modernized missile, which supposedly makes it possible to destroy, in particular, ballistic targets. There are few such complexes in the world: three latest modifications of American Patriot, Mamba, Israeli, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean. And we need them precisely because Iranian missiles are serious problem. During the Russian-Ukrainian war, we did not destroy Iskanders in the air. It is necessary to destroy launch platforms - ground, air or surface - even before the launch, as drone attacks in Sevastopol led to the disabling of Kalibr missile carriers. Thus we can counter missiles Russians use to attack objects in Ukraine. Military and political leadership of Ukraine is engaged in solving this problem, developing anti-missile defense. From the moment Iranian missile is detected, there are several tens of seconds to destroy it. It is necessary not to wait until damage is done and people die, but to act in advance. While allies have problems with it. Ukrainian leadership is working to convince them to do everything timely and quickly.

Increasing effectiveness of air defense consists in saturating it with various complexes. So far we have MANPADS, short-range systems and potentially - Hawk - medium-range, possibly Franco-Italian. It is necessary to look at the possibility of NASAMS missiles with a range of 40 km and more to work on ballistic missiles. One direction is mass supply of old complexes so that we can shoot down both at low altitudes and at close and medium ranges. And also supply of modern complexes, usually long-range, so that we can shoot down carriers and work on hypersonic ballistic missiles.

When the Patriot appears, the task of building air defense needs to be set on new approaches with an automated control system that increases effectiveness of combat operations, and in the field of air defense, time to complete tasks is minutes and seconds. Ukraine must convince its allies to build air defense and anti-missile defenses from Norway to Bulgaria, and possibly to Turkey. And Ukraine has a central place here. Based on this, it makes sense to supply just such systems and check them in active hostilities. Those who supply equipment have a lot of publicity, because only war thoroughly tests equipment.