Belgium to hand over Sea Sparrow missiles to Ukraine
4 September, 2023 Launch of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow guided missile from the USS Essex amphibious assault ship. Photo credits: US Navy Belgium will hand over Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missiles purchased from Germany to Ukraine.
L'Echo reported on this. Belgium bought missiles of this type from Germany, which were used on German Bremen-class frigates. In addition to missiles, the Belgian government plans to supply Ukraine with equipment worth EUR150 million.
The new supply will be an addition to other projects to support Ukraine.
Launch of the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow guided missile from a US amphibious assault ship. Photo credits: US Navy
In total, Belgium bought eight missiles for Ukraine, with the cost of each missile estimated at about EUR7,000. It should be noted that last week, Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder announced that Ukraine's air defense would be strengthened.
"New deliveries are planned, in particular in the fields of air defense, ammunition and training," Dedonder added. It is not yet known from which platform the missiles will be used, but as noted earlier, Ukraine and Poland are working to integrate Sea Sparrow missiles into the 9?310 TELAR of the Buk missile system.
The 2P25 launcher with the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow of the Kub air defense missile system. Photo from the network
Sea Sparrow missiles use a concept of operations based on a semi-active radar homing guidance principle.
In this way, the launch platform (normally a warship) is required to have a radar to detect and track the target. The naval version of the missile has the same specifications as the aviation version, but due to different launch conditions, the effective launch range is half as long.
Specifications of AIM-7 air-to-air missiles in various modifications. Photo from the archive
As Militarnyi previously reported, Belgium planned to provide Ukraine with about 320 Volvo trucks and 80 Lynx (Iveco LML) armored vehicles by the end of the year.
The vehicles are handed over after they undergo repairs.
The first batch of vehicles came from the Belgian Land Component.