Oleg Davigora22:46, 05/03/24

The successes of Ukrainian anti-aircraft fighters in shooting down the “Daggers” showed that in fact these Russian missiles have much worse characteristics than the Kremlin claimed.

French Defense Minister Francois Lecornu, following a meeting with his Italian counterpart Guido Crozetto, said that ” European air defense should be based around the promising SAMP/T NG anti-aircraft missile complex.”

As Defense Express notes , such a statement by the head of the French defense department can be called doubly ambitious.

“Because on the one hand, this is a proposal to build a pan-European air defense system already now on the basis of an anti-aircraft missile complex, which will only be in the future. And on the other hand, we are also talking about the ambitions of France to get something like a “European analogue of THAAD” based on that same SAMP/T as the “European analogue of Patriot”, – the article says.

At the moment, it is assumed that the promising SAMP/T NG will be able to shoot down cruise missiles at a distance of up to 150 kilometers, and ballistic targets even at a distance of 600 kilometers. Such an air defense system will include an improved Ground Fire 300 radar and will be based on the promising Aster 30 Block 1NT anti-missile, which has been under development since 2015.

“It is particularly interesting that the French want to make the SAMP/T NG capable of intercepting even aeroballistic or hypersonic missiles, such as the Russian Kh-47M2 “Dagger”. Such an ambition was officially announced for the first time in February 2023 at the level of the French Parliament, and until that moment there were only “separate conversations” from the company Thales, whether it is possible to give the promising SAMP/T NG the ability to shoot down hypersonic aerial targets. The comment made by the Delegate General for Armaments (DGA) Emmanuel Chiva to the Italian newspaper Figaro on May 2 of this year is particularly revealing that as part of the SAMP/T NG project, France wants to create a complex that “will be a technological breakthrough, compared to the American Patriot,” analysts believe.

It is noted that the successes of Ukrainian anti-aircraft fighters in shooting down the “Daggers” showed that in fact these Russian missiles have much worse characteristics than the Kremlin claimed. 

SAMP/T for Ukraine – details

The Italian government is going to approve a military aid package for Ukraine before the G7 summit on June 13. As the Italian newspaper La Repubblica writes, the government headed by Georgia Maloney decided to approve the ninth inter-ministerial decree on military aid to Ukraine, which will provide for the supply of the SAMP/T air defense system .

Italy has five such systems. Rome wants to transfer to Ukraine the system it lent to Slovakia. Another part of the systems will be used to protect the venue of the G7 summit.

(C)UNIAN 2024