The new US military aid package will include HAWK SAMs and classified air defense drones
The package is allocated under the USAI program, which means ordering weapons from manufacturers, and will focus on air defense systems
The United States is preparing a new large-scale aid package that will be officially announced in the near future. But traditionally, a few days before that, information about it appears in the Western media.
In particular, the Associated Press, citing its own sources, reported that it is about $1.2 billion to be allocated under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) program. This means that these weapons will be ordered from manufacturers, which means longer delivery cycles to Ukraine, unlike the Presidential Decommissioning Act (PDA) program, which transfers weapons from the US Department of Defense stockpile.
And according to available information, this package will be designed to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense. It includes HAWK anti-aircraft missile systems, additional ammunition for the air defense system, and the most interesting is the mention of drones for air defense. Along with this, Ukraine will purchase artillery systems, missiles, satellite imagery, fund maintenance of equipment, etc.
As for air defense drones, it is impossible to say that there is a special class of UAVs designed exclusively to provide air defense. Moreover, air defense is not only about destroying targets, but also about detecting them.
If we focus on the fact that such a drone must destroy the target itself, then we are talking about air-to-air missile carriers. And this is already a rather small number of existing UAVs in the world, including the MQ-9 Reaper, which can use AIM-9X or the air version of the Stinger. But it is unlikely that such a powerful strike drone, which is more of a carrier of precision weapons to defeat ground targets, including JDAMs, would be classified under this wording.
And given that we are talking about the USAI package, it is quite possible that we are talking about another development that is only being created and remains unknown. Namely, such drones, which are capable of destroying airborne objects, are potentially an extremely effective means of strengthening air defense. Moreover, they remove some of the issues of long-term training of pilots, deployment of large-scale ground infrastructure to service modern fighters, etc.
