As the United States strands Ukraine, Ukraine’s European allies are moving swiftly to fill the security void. Sweden, Lithuania and—perhaps most surprisingly—neutral Ireland have pledged to Ukraine a powerful air-defense system with millions of dollars worth of mobile missile launchers, guns and radars.
Sweden will provide the Saab-made Tridon guns and, alongside Lithuania, the Saab RBS 70 launchers. Ireland is providing the Giraffe radars, also made by Saab in Sweden. The radars detect targets for the missiles and guns to shoot down. “Good news for Ukraine,” Lithuanian Pres. Gitanas Nausėda said.
The RBS 70 is an air-defense classic: a 120-pound launcher firing a 70-pound, laser-guided missile that can hit airplanes, helicopters and drones as far as five miles away and three miles high. Three soldiers can carry an RBS 70 unit, broken down into portable packs, and set it up in a minute or two.
A four-person Giraffe radar, mounted to a truck or—in the case of Ireland’s seven Giraffes—a Bv 206 snowcat, extends an RBS 70 crew’s detection range to around 30 miles. The radar can beam target coordinates to the missile crew or pass them through a cable connected to the launcher. The launcher gives its operator a visual target cue and also an audio cue: a tone that grows louder as the target comes into view in the operator’s magnified optics.
The operator thumbs a launch button. The missile blasts into the air. A laser fitted to the launcher activates. The missile looks for the laser light reflecting from the target. “To hit the target, the gunner has only to keep it in the middle of the crosshairs,” explained Weapon Detective, a popular video channel.
Ukraine got its first RBS 70s and Giraffes from Sweden in early 2023 and assigned them to the 47th and 93rd Mechanized Brigades and potentially other units. The Swedish military trained the operators in Sweden. “You are also fighting for the security of Europe,” one instructor told his trainees. The Ukrainian brigades wasted no time shooting down Russian drones and, in at least one case, a Kamov Ka-52 attack helicopter.
The three-person Tridon gun is new. Essentially a truck-mounted version of Sweden’s iconic 40-millimeter Bofors gun, the Tridon plugs into the same command and control network as the Giraffes and RBS 70s. As a bonus, the fast-firing gun—lobbing a two-pound shell as far as four miles—can engage armored vehicles as well as aircraft.
The Russians should anticipate additional aerial losses as the new air-defense gear begins arriving in Ukraine. Crucially, Sweden is pledging to keep sending weapons. “Sweden’s support to Ukraine will continue for as long as necessary,” the defense ministry in Stockholm stated.
That neutral, lightly armed Ireland is now supplying Ukraine with critical military equipment alongside Ukraine’s more martial allies is telling. The United States under the chaotic, impulsive leadership of President Donald Trump is abandoning its longstanding alliances with fellow democracies in favor of, at best, strategic ambivalence.
At worst, the U.S. risks “siding with Russia,” warned Tatarigami, the founder of Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight. Trump’s demand that Ukraine share its vast mineral wealth in exchange for any future support is particularly egregious, Tatarigami wrote. “We are being robbed.”
But even if it fights without American support, Ukraine will not fight alone. More and better weapons are coming from more European countries.
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