Context
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The United States is considering retrieving older HAWK air defence equipment from storage to send to Ukraine which is facing a heavy barrage of Russian drone-fired and cruise missiles.
HAWK after Stinger
- An interceptor missiles would be an upgrade to the Stinger missile system, which is a smaller, shorter-range air defence system.
- Short for ‘Homing All the Way Killer’, entered service with the US Army in 1959, during the Vietnam war.
- It underwent upgrades over the decades that followed, including a major one in 1971 that produced the so-called I-HAWK (or improved HAWK), with a kill probability of 85%.
- The system was the predecessor to the PATRIOT missile defence system that Raytheon built in the 1990s.
- US forces largely stopped using HAWK from the early years of the new century.
- PATRIOT remains off the table for Ukraine.
Source: IE
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