Recently, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg announced that Spain will provide assistance to Ukraine with four "Hawk" medium-range surface-to-air missiles, and will conduct relevant training for Ukrainian soldiers. Previously, Spain had promised to provide another air defense missile, "Aspider".
"Hawk" and "Aspider" are both old missiles from the West. The earliest equipment was 70 years and 50 years ago, but objectively speaking, these two old missiles are more than enough to deal with existing Russian fighter jets.
MIM-23 "Hawk" missile is a medium-range surface-to-air missile developed by Raytheon in the 1950s and started service in 1959. This missile is equipped with a large number of Western countries and is the main air defense weapon in the West during the Cold War and .
"Hawke" missile adopts semi-active radar guidance, with a maximum speed of Mach 2.4, a range of 14,000 meters (the later model reaches 20,000 meters), and a maximum operating range of about 45-50 kilometers. The Hawk missile has also developed a variety of models, and most of them have been upgraded to "I-HAWK" after the 1980s. The subsequent improvement measures are mainly radar anti-jamming, new warheads, new fuses and software systems.
The "Hawke" equipped by the US military was retired in 2002 (mainly equipped with the Army and Marines ), and was basically replaced by the "Patriot" and "Sthorn" missiles. However, some of the Hawk missiles from other countries (basically all improved Hawks) are still in service today.
As an old missile with a history of more than 70 years, Hawk's combat performance is still good. It shot down nearly 100 fighter jets in the Middle East War and Iranian War , including MiG-17, MiG-21, MiG-23, Su-7, Su-22, Il-28, etc., and even the "Hawk" missile of Iranian accidentally shot down three F-14 "Tomcat" .
"Aspid" (also known as "vigil") is relatively new in age, but it was also developed in the 1970s. This missile is actually a variant of the "Sparrow" missile, and was improved by the technology introduced by Italy's Celenia Company. It not only has the air-to-air missile , but also has developed a medium-range surface-to-air missile version.
"Aspid" surface-to-air missiles and "improved Hawk" belong to the same level, and also use solid-fuel rocket engines, and the guidance method is also a semi-active radar. "Aspider" has three different development models. The most advanced " Aspider 2000" has a speed of Mach 4 and a maximum range of 25 kilometers.
ground-altitude and air version "Aspid" is not used much in the West, mainly Spanish, Italian and Greek military equipment, and more are exported to Asia, Africa and Latin countries. Spain is equipped with more than 200 "Aspiders", and both the "improved Hawks" are Spain's main field air defense weapons.
It is worth mentioning that my country introduced the air-launched version of "Aspid" in the 1980s, and on this basis, it developed its own ground-air version, namely the Hongqi-64 medium-range surface-air missile.
From a technical perspective, "Aspid" and "improved Hawk" belong to the advanced level of the 1970s and 1980s, roughly equivalent to Russia's Sam-11. However, Sam-11 still maintained strong combat effectiveness in the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the same level of "Aspid" and "improved Hawk" are probably not much different.
Why can missiles half a century ago still hunt Russian fighter jets in 2022? It's actually very simple. The level of the current fighter in Russia has also stagnated in the 1980s.
Russia's main fighter jets, including Su-27, MiG-29, Su-24, Su-25, etc., were almost all produced in the former Soviet Union. Even the latest Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 are basically products that reap the old Soviet capital, without essential leap. Especially for electronic warfare systems and jamming combat capabilities, Russia was originally lagging behind the West, and even faced with Western missiles and radars during the Cold War, it was not sure of victory.
The simplest example is that Russian fighter jets have so far lacked enough anti-radiation missile to suppress Ukrainian radar and air defense system .Ukraine's old air defense systems inherited from the Soviet Union, such as the S-300 (Sam-10) and 9M37 (Sam-11) missiles, can still maintain a relatively solid national air defense system.
can be seen that although the years of "Aspid" and "Hawk" missiles have reached 50 years and 70 years respectively, they still play a great role in Ukraine's battlefield rich in "nostalgia" atmosphere. (Author: Tao Mujian)
