Ukraine’s continued requests to Western allies for more air defenses were answered in part this week, with the announcement that Germany has ordered an additional 17 IRIS-T air defense systems for Kyiv.
And the timing couldn’t be more critical – an ongoing campaign of aerial strikes on Kharkiv, devastating attacks like that on Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in July, a strike on Poltava earlier this week that killed at least 55 people, and an attack on Lviv the day after, repeatedly highlight the shortcomings in the country’s air defenses.
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But according to experts who spoke to the Kyiv Independent, while welcome, the IRIS-Ts will be unable to protect from something that has become an increasing concern in recent days – Iranian ballistic missiles.
Theoretically, those elderly HAWKs we sent to deal with the Shaheds do have a limited anti-ballistic missile capability, given the right MIM-23 missile variant. I don’t know if it’s adequate to deal with the Iranian ballistic missiles, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-23_Hawk