Production of US air defense systems in Ukraine this year: what systems can we talk about
The result of the joint production of air defense systems with the United States in Ukraine should appear in more than three months
Joint production of air defense equipment in Ukraine and the United States is to begin by the end of 2023. This was the deadline announced by the Minister of Strategic Industries of Ukraine Oleksandr Kamyshin.
The agreement itself was reached during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the United States, when he announced joint arms production in general, with a special emphasis on air defense.
At the same time, more details from Alexander Kamyshin allow us to assess what exactly this may be about. In an interview with NV, he noted three aspects. First, the work is already underway. The second is that the results of the joint production will appear before the end of 2023. The third is that “other complicated systemic things will come in the coming years.”
Thus, it is hardly a difficult project to implement, such as the production of powerful anti-aircraft missile systems like Patriot or the notional NASAMS in Ukraine. In theory, this is certainly possible, but it will take years before the first result appears. Therefore, appetites can be immediately reduced for those air defense systems that can be deployed in the shortest possible time, three months to be exact.
Against this backdrop, the most realistic option would be to start producing artillery and machine gun anti-aircraft systems in Ukraine. The need for these is more than significant due to the scale-up of Russian strikes with Shahed-136 aircraft, of which a record number of more than 500 were launched in September.
Again, given the minimum timeframe of only three months until the end of 2023, we may not even be talking about advanced systems like Kongsberg’s CORTEX Typhon or EOS’s Slinger combat module. At the same time, everything rests on technological cycles.
For example, the first batch of 10 Slingers, according to the Australian company, will arrive in Ukraine by the end of the year. At the same time, the order for them was most likely placed by the US government in April of this year, or certainly by Ukraine in the same month. That is, it will take up to eight months to produce the first and relatively small batch at an already established production facility.
Therefore, it is quite possible that we are talking about simpler systems, such as Victor from the Czech Republic, which is equipped with a thermal imaging sight.
Another scenario is the implementation of the already studied solutions to integrate Western anti-aircraft missiles into Soviet SAMs. And since it is unlikely that it will be possible to remove them from combat duty and send them across the ocean, this work must be carried out in Ukraine.
Another rather pragmatic option is to install launchers for Western missiles with infrared guidance on our own launchers. That is, the development of the direction that was realized by the UK with the unannounced AIM-132 ASRAAMs on an ersatz launch.
At the same time, it is quite possible to understand the air defense system as not only the means of destroying targets, but also the means of detecting them. But then the variability begins to increase significantly. In general, it is extremely important that the process itself is already underway, and the number of possible options allows us to surprise the enemy rather than announce it.
