File image.
The Ukrainian Air Force’ Command Center released on May 1 video footage showing a new locally-made short-range air defense system dubbed “Stach”.
In the footage, the system is seen firing what appears to be an American-made AGM-114L Hellfire Longbow missile at an unidentified aerial target, most likely a drone.
The system is mounted on a trailer and appears to be built around the Hellfire’s M299 Launcher quadlauncher, which is installed on a rotating torrent.
The AGM-114L, which has a range of around eight kilometers and carries a nine kilogram warhead, is guided via equipped with millimeter-wave active radar homing seeker.
For first control, the Stach seems to be equipped with a forward-looking active electronically scanned array radar from RADA Technologies, most likely from the Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar, MHR, series, which can detect a medium sized drone from up to 25 kilometers.
The Stach very much functions like the Tempest short-range air defense system delivered earlier this year by American defense company V2X to the Ukrainian Air Force’ Command Center.
The main difference between the Stach and the Tempest is that the latter can be armed with only two Hellfire missiles, and is based on a lightweight, high-mobility buggy — possibly derived from the commercially-available Can-Am Maverick X3.
Click to see full-size image. (Telegram)
The Stach was clearly designed to deal with Russian drones, but in that regard it can’t be considered to be cost effective in any way.
A single AGM-114L could cost well over $100,000. That’s much more expensive than the average drone deployed by the Russian military in the special operation zone.
Ukraine didn’t receive many Hellfire missiles — originally designed to be launched from air — from its backers since the start of the special military operation. With much of Western anti-aircraft missiles stockpiled depleted by fighting in both Ukraine and the Middle East, the Stach was likely designed especially to take advantage of stashed Hellfire stockpiles without taking the cost into consideration.
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