As Ukraine war escalates, a look at air defence system Germany is sending Kyiv

In the aftermath of Russia escalating its attacks on Ukraine’s cities, Germany has vowed to send a new air defence system to bolster Kyiv.

At least 19 were left dead with more than 100 wounded and infrastructure damaged after the barrage of Russian strikes across the country, Kyiv said.

The retaliatory strikes came after Moscow blamed Kyiv for a blast on a bridge connecting Russia to Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, calling the attacks ‘despicable’, wrote on Twitter that “we are doing everything to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences”.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz in June promised the highly modern IRIS-T systems that he said were capable of shielding a large city from air raids.

Germany had earlier expected to deliver the first of several missile shield systems by year’s end, but defence minister Christine Lambrecht said the first would now be “ready for the effective protection of people in the coming days”.

Lambrecht said the latest Russian strikes highlighted “the importance of the rapid delivery of air defence systems to Ukraine”.

But what do we know about the IRIS-T system? Let’s take a closer look:

IRIS-T SLM is a land-based air defence system that can target aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, jet artillery, drones, anti-radar missiles and bombs.

The IRIS-T system has a shield range spanning a height of 20 kilometres and a breadth of 40 kilometres.

According to Diehl BGT Defence, the weapon system manufacturer of weapons system, it is used to “protect the population, important buildings, objects as well as ground troops against attacks from the air.”

The system comprises missiles, eight-round launcher vehicle, command vehicle, and all-weather 360-degree AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar for surveillance and target detection, as per Asia Times.

In June, Scholz said that the radar-guided batteries, supplied at an estimated cost of €140 million apiece, would “enable Ukraine to protect an entire city against Russian air raids”, as per Times UK.

It is the low-altitude component of NATO’s Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), which is intended to defend static installations and mobile forces, as per Asia Times.

It is compatible with the Israeli SPYDER-MR and the Norwegian NASAMS systems, as per the report.

Ground-based air defence is capable of providing continuous area protection over the long term, the website states.

The system was first successfully trialled in 2014.

Ukraine has been asking for this type of system since the conflict began in February, as per BBC.

It uses GPS and INS navigation, and receives frequent target positional data from its base station, guiding it towards the threat.

It also has an infra-red seeker and is effective against helicopters, aircraft, cruise missiles, air-to-surface weapons and anti-ship weapons.

Ukraine’s current system

Currently, Ukraine has Soviet-era surface-to-air (SAM) systems, comprising S-300 for long-range and Buk-M1 SAMs for shorter range.

As per missilethreat.csis.org, the S-300 is an ‘expansive weapons system’ which employs over 20 missile variants. It has a 40-year service life. It currently uses the 5V55K, 5V55R, and 48N6 missiles.

These missiles use high-explosive fragmentation warheads triggered by proximity and impact fuses to destroy their targets. The 5V55K and 5V55R are 7.25 m long and the 48N6 is 7.50 m long. All three missiles are 0.51 m in diameter. While the missiles are similar in terms of appearance, they differ in effective ranges and intercept speeds. The 5V55K has a maximum effective range of 47 km while the 5V55R and 48N6 have 75 km and 150 km ranges respectively. The 5V55K and 5V55R models can hit targets which are moving up to 4,300 kph. The 48N6 can hit targets moving up to 10,000 kph.

The missiles are carried on the 9P85S transporter erector launcher (TEL), a 9.4 m long, 8×8 truck that can carry up to four of the missiles.

As per Asia Times, Ukraine fielded these formidable Soviet-era air defence systems including around 300 S-300 long-range SAMs organized into 100 batteries at the start of the war. This system, the backbone of Ukraine’s air defence, is responsible for inflicting significant losses on Russia’s air force.

However, Russia has knocked out scores of these launchers since its invasion, and Ukraine’s missile reserves are running critically low.

To fend off the drone attacks, Ukraine also has Man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS).

“However defending large cities with MANPADS would require lots of launchers, due to their short range,” Gressel said.

More broadly, “there is no (one-size-fits-all) weapons system to defend (Ukraine), as the targets are fairly different in speed, course, altitude, and numbers,” he added.

“Air defences need to be layered, and different weapons system supporting each other.”

This was the case around Kyiv in March and April, he said.

“They intercepted several Tochka-Us and Kalibr missiles, although of course not all in one attack.”

The German system would be a significant upgrade.

But the contract for the IRIS-T systems includes 12 weeks of training Ukrainians to use them, Nicholas Fiorenza, of the British intelligence analysis firm Janes, warned.

“I don’t see them starting to have an impact before next spring,” he said.

The German army itself has IRIS T-missiles in its inventory but not the complete surface-to-air system. It fires the missiles from Tornado or Eurofighter jets.

‘No one-size-fits-all system’

Analysts warn than no air-defence systems can completely defend Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine on Tuesday said Russian forces had fired more than 80 missiles on cities across the country – including the capital Kyiv – damaging in particular energy facilities.

More than 300 localities were without power across the county following the attacks, the emergency services said. Missiles including cruise missiles rained down on the country’s cities, including in rare strikes on the capital Kyiv, far from the frontlines in the east and south.

Fiorenza, of the British intelligence analysis firm Janes, said full coverage was unlikely.

“Don’t think there is any country capable of stopping (every) single possible missile or UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) or a plane getting through,” he told AFP.

The Russians appear to have fired short-range Iskander and Tochka-U ballistic missiles, as well as Kalibr cruise missiles, said Gustav Gressel of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The cries for Western air defences around Ukrainian population centres will become much louder after” Monday’s strikes, said Tyler Rogoway, editor of the The War Zone website.

“Cruise missiles are a challenge though – even for modern Western air defence systems,” he added in a Twitter thread, as they are not “an impenetrable shield”.

Francois Heisbourg, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), warned hard choices would have to be made about where best to concentrate defensive weapons.

“What infrastructure and what population centres should be defended, and how efficiently? Defending everything would amount to defending nothing.”

Even in Israel, a country with an area 27-times smaller than Ukraine, the Iron Dome air defence system is not 100 percent effective.

Pressure mounts on West

The US has provided the greatest amount of weaponry so far - totalling more than $17bn while the UK has supplied the country with the Starstreak anti-aircraft missile system, and other systems, as part of an assistance package worth £2.3bn.

Pressure will also be on Western arms manufacturers to produce air defence weaponry, long put on the back burner as it was deemed less useful in the battle against jihadists from Afghanistan to the Sahel.

Wojciech Lorenz, head of the international security programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said air and missile defence systems were “unfortunately in short supply in the West”.

“But we should find what we can send to further strengthen Ukrainian morale and to limit the destruction if Russia decides to attack civilian targets” across Ukraine, he said.

Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, said air and missile defence systems were “expensive and not fool-proof”, but essential.

“And just as Israel’s Iron Dome has shown over the years, they can give a besieged population a greater sense of hope even when their 100 percent effectiveness cannot be presumed,” he added.

With inputs from agencies

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