It is unlikely that this newly arrived German air defense system has played a role in today's defense. It will take a while to install, train and then operate. It is notable that this version of IRIS T (IRIS-T SLM) has not even actively served in the German military themselves.
I tend to think that the increase in interception precision comes more from the decreasing Russian cruise missile quality than from the Ukrainian interception's tech improvement. It is unlikely that the learning process on the Ukrainian side improved this fast in a day.
It seems that most of what Kremlin has left are subsonic snail-pace cruise missiles. NATO can basically calculate the trajectory real-time, send the data to the Ukrainian anti-missile troops, and literally have Ukrainian infantry soldiers using portable missiles (Soviet 9K38 or NATO stinger, both dirt-cheap toys as compared with their cruise missile targets) to shoot them down as one of many interception methods.
Normally, anti-missile defense will be far more expensive than the missile-base offensive moves. But here we do see those rare counter-examples: a decade-old 9K38, costing $30K something, knocks out this million-dollar-baby called cruise missile.
���༭ʱ��: 2022-10-11 19:45:26
