Manufacturer reports Kiev’s feedback
IRIS-T achieves a shooting rate of almost 100 percent
09/06/2023, 04:40 am
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The Bundeswehr has not yet deployed IRIS-T, but the German air defense system has already proven itself impressively in the Ukraine. The manufacturer Diehl Defense reports an almost 100% kill rate. The data on the hits come from Ukraine.
According to the manufacturer, the modern German air defense system IRIS-T has already fended off more than 100 air attacks in Ukraine, including cruise missiles and drones. “We have an almost 100% kill rate, that’s what the Ukrainian military is reporting back to us,” said Harald Buschek, a managing director at manufacturer Diehl Defence. So far there have been “over 100 successful kills,” he said.
The federal government has so far left two of the systems to Ukraine, another will be delivered “shortly” and four more should follow later, said Buschek. The system “saves lives there every day,” said Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz, referring to the mission in Ukraine.
According to Diehl Defense, the IRIS-T SLM air defense system enables protection against attacks by aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles. The system can fire at targets up to 20 kilometers altitude and 40 kilometers range. So a kind of protective screen is stretched over an area. For example, one of the systems can protect a medium-sized city like Nuremberg or Hanover.
“Heaven will be safer now”
“Thank you very much to our partners for IRIS. The sky will be safer now,” wrote the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, on social networks in mid-August. The German new development IRIS-T is not yet in use in the Bundeswehr, but has proven itself for the first time in the Ukraine.
Germany has ordered six of the air defense systems for its own use. The first is to be delivered to the Bundeswehr in the coming year. Buschek and Gerhartz spoke at the Bundeswehr’s Todendorf military training area on the Baltic Sea in Schleswig-Holstein, where a training facility for ground-based air defense was recently opened together with the Luftwaffe.