The Ukrainian Navy released footage of the crew of one of the boats destroying a Russian X-59 air-to-surface missile using the APKWS system.
The Russians fired a missile from a Su-57 aircraft in an attempt to attack the civilian infrastructure of the Yuzhny commercial sea port.
This is the first public case when the Ukrainian Defense Forces managed to shoot down a missile using APKWS, writes Defense Express.
The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System is a high-precision weapon that combines unguided 70-mm Hydra 70 missiles with a semi-active laser guidance unit; the transfer of such missiles from Germany first became known in 2023, and the first video in action against the Russians appeared in the summer of the same year.
APKWS missiles are used in Vampire missile launchers, a total of 14 such launchers were ordered for the defense forces as part of defense assistance, all of them have already been delivered and, as we see, are effectively used against both Russian drones and missiles.
The Vampire units were ordered for the APU directly from the manufacturer, L3Harris Technologies, and the first four systems took six months to deliver.
Source: Racurs
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