Air Force officially ‘spotted’ British AIM-132 ASRAAM missile system in action for the first time (video)
The Air Force reported on combat operations on the night of October 12 and for the first time officially lit up a makeshift British SAM for an AIM-132 ASRAAM air-to-air missile.
The Air Force of Ukraine said that on the night of October 12, the racists launched 33 Shahed-131/136 kamikaze drones across Ukraine. The attack was repelled in 6 regions of our country at once, and the air defense forces managed to shoot down 28 missile aircraft, but five of them still reached their targets and hit the port infrastructure in the south of Odesa region.
The Air Force also later published an official video showing one of the episodes of the downing of the Shahed that night. And this video is important because it is the first official confirmation that the Ukrainian Defense Forces have a makeshift British air-to-air missile system for the AIM-132 ASRAAM missile, and it also shows the combat operation of this system.
For the first time, the availability of the British AIM-132 ASRAAM air-to-air system at the launch pads became known only in August 2013, but the original source was a publication by the British newspaper The Times, citing an unnamed Ukrainian military officer.
The same publication also included an image of this improvised SAM from the UK, which allowed us to at least relatively assess the characteristics of this complex. As you can clearly see, Eurofighter pylons are used as guides for the AIM-132 AMRAAM, and the missiles are launched vertically.
The AIM-132 itself has high energy at launch, and at the same time quite moderate dimensions: the launch weight is only 88 kg, the fuselage length is 2.9 meters. When launched from an airplane, the AIM-132 can reach a range of up to 25 kilometers, so it is likely that when launched from a ground launcher, the range can be up to 10 kilometers.
The only clear image available so far of the British AIM-132 shows something like a mini-radar for detecting airborne targets. However, as we can see from the above video from the Air Force, missiles can be launched without turning on the radar, with the expectation that the infrared GEO will be guided by the heat signature of the target.
In any case, this is exactly what the sequence indicates: first, one of the fighters says “we see him!”, i.e. “Shahed”, the next step is the command to launch the missiles, and the third step is the actual launch of the AIM-132 ASRAAM.
