HAWK AIR DEFENCE EQUIPMENT
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Context: The United States is considering retrieving older HAWK air defence equipment from storage to send to Ukraine which is facing a heavy barrage of Russian drone-fired and cruise missiles
Details:
- The HAWK interceptor missiles would be an upgrade to the Stinger missile system, which is a smaller, shorter-range air defence system.
- The US sent the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stingers to Ukraine early on in the war, and then placed orders for more stocks of the missiles with Raytheon Technologies Corp. after they demonstrated great success in stopping Russian air assaults.
PATRIOT predecessor:
- HAWK, short for ‘Homing All the Way Killer’, entered service with the US Army in 1959, during the Vietnam war.
- It underwent upgrades over the decades that followed, including a major one in 1971 that produced the so-called I-HAWK (or improved HAWK), with a kill probability of 85%.
- The HAWK system was the predecessor to the PATRIOT missile defence system that Raytheon built in the 1990s. US forces largely stopped using HAWK from the early years of the new century.
- The Biden administration would use the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to transfer the HAWK equipment. PDA allows for the “speedy delivery of defence articles and services from Department of Defence stocks to foreign countries and international organisations to respond to unforeseen emergencies”.
- Military assistance under PDA does not require Congressional approval, and could “begin arriving within days — or even hours — of approval”.
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