During a recent briefing, Pentagon officials revealed that Ukraine could use AGM-88 HARM Missiles on the MiG-29s were incompatible.
File photo of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine of a MiG-29 Fulcrum
During the announcement of the new military assistance package for Ukraine, the representative of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine stated that Ukraine was able to modernize the existing aircraft in their service, and for this reason, they even there are many anti-radiation (or anti-radar) missiles. will be shipped to this country.
“They actually successfully integrated it as something that we determined was technically feasible, and based on that feasibility determination, we made it available to them. So this is really the second batch of HARMS that we are offering“, the senior US defense official said in a brief meeting.
This achievement is actually quite interesting. Ukrainian military experts have managed to integrate the American-made AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missile into Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter aircraft, and seem to have done so in record time. The US first admitted to sending these anti-radiation missiles to Ukraine on August 8, and the first confirmations of this aid came from Ukraine. about a week ago.
Now the Pentagon is planning to send more missiles to Ukraine: “First, we are providing more High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles. These are HARM missiles. Ukraine has successfully used these missiles. They have successfully integrated them into Ukrainian aircraft, and this allows Ukraine to search and destroy Russian radar. So we will provide more HARM missiles,” speaker.
As Defense Express writeThe MiG-29 is the only model of this family of aircraft currently in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There are two minor modifications, the MiG-29 and the MiG-29MU1, but they are not full-fledged multirole fighters. They have no air systems to attack ground targets. The only aircraft to receive this ability is Modification of MiG-29MU2completed testing in March 2021. However, at that time there were no official plans to make these aircraft compatible with any US missile systems.
However, representatives of the Pentagon did not disclose the exact principle of how this integration is done. Some sources say that the US has provided all the necessary facilities for this integration on its own, because it was previously revealed that “spare parts for MiG” have been purchased. sourced “from all over the world” to Ukraine. Although at the time, the purpose of these spares was described as “to keep Soviet-era fighters flying”.
Several countries including Poland, Slovakia and Romania have accumulated a great deal of experience working on various upgrades to older generation MiGs. However, it is unknown if any of these countries share their expertise with the aim of adapting HARM to the MiG-29.
