Britain equipped Ukrainian forces with deadly anti-tank missiles

 Britain equipped Ukrainian forces with deadly anti-tank missiles.

Before the conclusion of the news, we should know the qualities of this missile system that Ukraine got from Britain.

The Main Battle Tank and Light Anti-tank Weapon, also known as the NLAW, is a joint British and Swedish short-range fire-and-forget anti-tank missile system. Designed for use by infantry, the MBT LAW is shoulder-fired and disposable, firing once before being disposed of. It is currently in use with the military forces of the United Kingdom, Finland, Luxembourg, and Sweden, among others.

The MBT LAW was developed by Saab Bofors Dynamics and Thales Air Defence in collaboration with the British Ministry of Defence in 2002. The development is a joint venture between the UK and Sweden using technology derived from the BILL 2 (warhead and guidance), and AT4 CS (confined space capability) systems.

 The UK MoD Defence Procurement Agency will procure the systems for both the UK and Sweden, with Sweden signing a contract for the weapon in December 2005 where it will be designated the "RB (Robot) 57".

It has been estimated that the UK requirement may be for up to 20,000 systems for the British Armed Forces and each system has a shelf life of around 20 years.

 In December 2007, Finland placed an order for an undisclosed number of NLAW systems. An additional, undisclosed, number was ordered in December 2008.

It is a soft-launch system, allowing it to be used by infantry from within an enclosed space. In this system, the missile is first launched out of the launcher using a low powered ignition. After the missile travels several metres into the flight, its main rocket ignites, propelling the missile from there on to the target. 

Guidance is obtained using a predicted line of sight (PLOS).

For a moving target, the gunner maintains tracking for three seconds, training the missile's guidance electronics to compute the target's angular speed. After launch, the missile flies autonomously to the target making the necessary corrections according to the data acquired by the tracking.

It is unnecessary for the gunner to consider the range to the target. After launch, the missile's position in its trajectory always coincides with the target irrespective of range.

The portable, short-range, fire-and-forget system entered service in 2009 as the "Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapon" (NLAW), to replace the British Army's existing LAW 80 system that had in UK's deployment reached obsolescence, as well as the Interim Lightweight Anti-tank Weapon (ILAW), AT4 CS, which was in deployment as a substitute for the period in which the MBT-LAW had yet to be deployed. Deliveries began in December 2009.

In Finnish Defence Forces the NLAW complements the existing stock of LAW and Apalis rockets and Spike and TOW missiles; LAW is primarily intended against lighter armoured vehicles, but an MBT in close range is engaged with both LAW and NLAW. LAW is stocked at the infantry platoon level, NLAW is stocked at the infantry company level.

At this level we come to know that, NLAW is a very powerful weapon to demolished any armoured threat even modern MBTs because it has the capability of top attack from standoff ranges (still something serious capability)

It is confirmed now that Britain provided at least 2000 such types of systems to Ukrainian armed forces which are able to stop Russian armoured columns with big damage.

So Russian forces can be got a big blow if Ukrainian forces go for hit and run tactics against them.

As a neutral source, we are against war and want to see dialogues between both Ukrainian and Russian authorities instead of war.

Source of information :

Wikipedia 

Blog author : Saeed Ullah Gm