UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said UK is exploring donating Starstreak anti-air missiles to Ukraine. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Wallace said Ukraine’s anti-air capability ‘needs strengthening’ because Russian forces are ‘changing their tactics’ to focus more on shelling and air strikes.
Designed to provide close air defence against conventional air threats such as fixed-wing fighters and helicopters, Starstreak has a range beyond 7 km and is capable of being launched from lightweight land, sea, and air platforms. It can reach speeds of Mach 3.0 and as the system is laser-guided it can defeat countermeasures.
Update 16/3/2022: BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale has said that UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has now confirmed that Starstreak air defence system will be sent to Ukraine:
Update 27/03/2022: UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has confirmed that the Starstreak air-defence system has been deployed and is operational in Ukraine.
Starstreak High Velocity Missile (HVM)
| Type: | Manufacturer: |
| Short-range surface-to-air missile | Thales Air Defence |
| Country of origin: | Targets: |
| United Kingdom | Fixed-wing fighters; helicopters |
| Flight speed: | Operational range: |
| Mach 3 + | 300 – 7000m + |
| Operators: | Service: |
| United Kingdom, South Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ukraine | 1997 – present |
| Guidance system: | Operator: |
| Semi-Automatic Command to Line-Of-Sight (SACLOS) | 1 |
| Variants: | Weight: |
| ATASK (Air-to-Air), Lightweight Multiple Launcher (LML), Seastreak, Self-propelled (SP) HVM, Starstreak Avenger, THOR/Multi-Mission System (MMS) | Missile: 14 kg; warhead: 0.9 kg |
