A senior Ukrainian official referred to as on Monday (Oct 2) for a reassessment of Western anti-aircraft techniques being equipped to Ukraine, saying easier and cheaper weapons could possibly be extra cost-efficient in countering Russia’s Iranian-made Shahed drones.
The Shahed drones are deployed in Russian assaults nearly day-after-day. Ukraine has change into expert at downing them although some nonetheless hit industrial and residential websites regardless of Moscow’s assurances that it doesn’t goal civilians.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, mentioned the difficulty was not simply certainly one of securing extra anti-aircraft techniques “however primarily fixing a mathematical drawback mendacity within the economics of battle”.
Whereas Western techniques, like NASAMS and Iris-T, have been used to down missiles, he mentioned, utilizing them to intercept Shaheds will not be cost-effective, Podolyak wrote in English on the X platform, previously Twitter.
“Thus, it results in depletion of allied stockpiles and long-term weakening,” Podolyak wrote.
“The answer is clear: along with cellular large-caliber machine weapons, there are many easier and cheaper anti-aircraft techniques accessible at this time which have confirmed themselves to be efficient in opposition to Shaheds. These embody Gepard and Vampire.”
The Gepard is an anti-aircraft-gun tank made in Germany. The US-made Vampire counter-drone system consists of a laser-guided missile launcher than might be put in on a truck mattress.
Such scaling-down, Podolyak wrote, “will minimise the impact of Russian ‘raids’ and guarantee long-term stability of Ukrainian skies and our neighbouring NATO international locations”.
Ukraine has relied closely on arms provides from Western international locations in going through the 19-month-old Russian invasion and in launching a counteroffensive in June geared toward recovering the roughly 18 per cent of its territory held by Moscow’s troops.
Zelenskyy and different officers have harassed in latest weeks the significance of growing Ukraine’s personal arms trade and in collectively growing weapons with Western corporations.