The Aspide 2000 air defense system is designed to protect valuable assets on the ground such as air bases, naval ports, industrial plants, and critical buildings.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister announced that the country has received NASAMS air defense systems from the US and Aspide 2000 from Spain and some European countries to deal with Russian cruise missile and suicide UAVs. The new air defense systems will significantly increase their strength and help the Ukrainian army better protect the skies.
The US and its allies have not commented on the report. Previously, the West decided to support air defense complexes after Russia repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy systems and infrastructure. Ukrainian President Zelensky repeatedly called on the West to help improve air defense capabilities against the power of Russian weapons.
The Aspide 2000 air defense system is designed to protect valuable assets on the ground such as air bases, naval ports, industrial plants, and critical buildings. Although not as famous as other mid-range defense systems, Aspide 2000 is still trusted by many countries. It is known that Aspide 2000 was developed by Selenia of Italy in the 1970s-1980s.
Aspide is provided with semi-active radar homing seeker. It is very similar to the American AIM-7 Sparrow, using the same airframe, but uses an inverse monopulse seeker that is far more accurate and much less susceptible to ECM than the original conical scanning version. This resemblance, and that Selenia was provided with the technology know-how of the AIM-7, around 1,000 of which it had produced under licence, has generally led non-Italian press to refer to the Aspide as a Sparrow variant.
The missile has a weight of 220 kg, a length of 3.7 m, a diameter of 203 mm, a wingspan of 0.8 m, carrying a 30 kg fragmentation warhead. The maximum speed is up to Mach 4, the range is 35 km, and the ceiling is 8 km.
Aspide, in its various versions, was used both in the air-to-air role, carried by Aeritalia F-104s in the apposite versions F-104S and F-104ASA, and in the surface-to-air naval role. In the latter role it has been replaced by the MBDA Aster. Naval Aspide launchers can be adapted to fire the Sparrow by merely switching a single circuit board.
Despite being born for a long time, thanks to the upgrades, the Aspide 2000 air defense system is still very scary in modern warfare. They can still easily destroy enemy combat UAVs and cruise missiles. China has also copied the features of this system to produce a domestic version, the HQ-64. NASAMS and Aspide 2000 are currently considered the best options for Ukraine. These two weapons systems can help Ukraine better cope with Russian missile attacks and suicide drones. Western experts say that systems such as NASAMS and Aspide 2000 are a significant step forward compared to the man-portable air defense missiles that NATO has provided to Ukraine in recent months.
