Luxembourg, the small western European country and a founding member of the NATO military alliance, announced February 28 that it was sending “100 NLAW anti-tank weapons, jeeps, and 15 military tents to Ukraine.” The 15 tents, sent by a country with a smaller population than the city of Louisville, caught a lot of internet attention and humor, but the anti-tank weapons stand out as a direct aid of the sort sought by Ukrainian forces. In 2014, The New York Times reported that rebels using Strelas had resorted to recharging the batteries themselves. The age of these weapons means that the batteries used to power the missile launcher might have drained and degraded since they were built. This makes the weapon most useful against helicopter or low-flying jet attacks, and also possibly of some use against drones, though when the Strela was developed, modern military combat drones were still decades in the future. The Strela-2M and Strela 3 versions are sophisticated enough to somewhat distinguish between the engines of aircraft and flares, and can also be fired at approaching as well as fleeing aircraft.Īs the most sophisticated version, the Strela 3 can hit aircraft at altitudes as low as 33 feet to as high as 9,800 feet, and from a distance of as close as 1,600 feet to 2.6 miles. This sensor was easily confused by flares, which an aircraft could release to steer the missile off course. (Confusingly, the Strela-1 is an unrelated vehicle with anti-air weapons that also debuted in 1968.) Because it had to look for engines and their heat, the missile was primarily used to shoot at the rear of aircraft, after they had already passed on an attack run. The first version of the Strela, the Strela-2, used an infrared sensor to track the engines of helicopters and other aircraft. There are three main variants of the Strela missile, and all of them use infrared sensors to track targets. The weapons Germany is giving to Ukraine date back to this East German arsenal, which makes them at least 31 years old. The first Strela missiles were fielded in 1968, and the weapons were fielded by many of the Soviet-aligned militaries, including East Germany, a different nation than the rest of Germany from 1949 to 1990. They are fired from a shoulder-mounted tube. Germany, which before the invasion had pledged military support of just 5,000 helmets to Ukraine, announced March 3 that it will send 2,700 Strela anti-air missiles to Ukraine’s military.įirst developed by the Soviet Union, the Strela weapons are a kind of MANPADS, or man-portable air defense system. Here are three weapon systems, and how they have been observed in use so far. This uncertainty can cover the location of enemies, whether militias are friendly or not, and even if an abandoned tank was destroyed in a fight or simply left on the road because it ran out of fuel.ĭespite the uncertainty, understanding some of the weapons used by forces fighting in Ukraine can help shed light on the larger conflict. This is compounded by the “ fog of war,” a military term for the uncertainty of information in conflict. Governments in a war have a vested interest in exaggerating the accomplishments of their own forces, and downplaying their own losses. Accurate numbers of destroyed equipment are hard to come by. ![]() Since the invasion, Ukrainian forces have destroyed many of these tanks, helicopters, and artillery pieces. In fact, starting in October 2021, it was the assembly of these weapons along the border with Ukraine that first suggested to the outside world that Russia was planning a larger invasion than just its ongoing support for the separatist republics in the east of the country. Russian war machines, from tanks to helicopters to artillery, have featured prominently in the war in Ukraine since it began a week ago.
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