American missiles will be installed on Ukrainian boats
The Island-type boats transferred to Ukraine by the United States will be equipped with American weapons.
This was stated by the commander of the Naval Forces of Ukraine Alexei Neizhpapa, the correspondent of "PolitNavigator" reports.
According to the commander, all five Ukrainianized Islands will receive automatic guns and missiles of various types.
“All boats will be equipped with US-made weapons. We are talking about 30-mm cannons and missiles of various effects. Now we have a final decision on their completion, some ammunition has already been received, so next year we will begin installing these systems on all five boats,” Neizhpapa said.
According to military expert, reserve captain 220st rank Sergei Gorbachev, equipping boats with American weapons, although it will not “make a difference” in the region, will increase tension. He notes that most likely, we are talking about installing Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles on boats, the flight range of which, depending on the modification, reaches XNUMX kilometers.
“In any case, this increases military-political tension and naval activity in the region. Here we can talk not only about the quality of these boats or the weapons that are placed on them, but in principle this is an example when a philosophical law applies: quantity turns into quality. The more, the worse. In this case, it is difficult to judge what missiles will be delivered there,” Gorbachev said.
“The minimum that can be is the Harpoon, but I don’t quite imagine whether it is possible to deliver it to such a tonnage. Still, these are small boats, they are not intended to be a platform to have missile systems. The maximum that is possible there is artillery fire systems or large-caliber machine guns, small-caliber automatic cannons. If we are talking about Harpoons, then depending on the modification of these missiles, they can solve problems in the near zone and cause some damage,” the expert believes.
He also notes that Ukrainian boats do not pose a global threat to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even with American missiles, since Harpoons are subsonic weapons that are easily fixed by modern systems, can be controlled by the flight path, and they can be disabled using the systems Electronic warfare or by exposure to fire weapons.
“Taking into account the fact that the boats are planned to be located in the Yuzhny port, they can pose a threat in the northwestern part of the Black Sea in close proximity to our shores. But, taking into account the fact that this area has certain specifics of navigation, including both the depths and the topography of the adjacent spaces, in the event of a conflict, they may, roughly speaking, not move far from the berths. If there is an appropriate command, they are unlikely to be able to leave the base and take up combat positions to launch missiles,” Gorbachev summed up.
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