As part of military assistance, the Slovak government has approved the transfer of 2K12 Kub anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine.

This is reported by the Slovak Teraz media.

“Slovakia gives (…) parts of the air defense system, relevant spare parts, as well as ammunition for this system,” said Defense Minister Jaroslav Naď.

According to him, the process of transferring weapons will last several weeks, and negotiations are currently underway with Ukraine and its allies. So far, anti-aircraft systems are in Slovakia.

“We will not report the transfer in advance due to operational security,” Slovakia’s defense minister said.

The exact number and components of the systems are not disclosed, however the note of the Minister of Defense on “parts of the systems” supposedly means the supply of only launchers due to the irrelevance of other SAM’s parts. This makes sense only if the Ukrainian military can integrate these launches into its own air defense system.

Kub SAM

2К12 Kub is a Soviet medium-range anti-aircraft missile system developed by the OKB-15 design bureau. The system was manufactured in the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1983.

The technical specifications of the system ensure the detection of air targets at ranges up to 65 km and fires at distances from 4.5 to 23.5 km and in the range of altitudes up to 14,000 meters. The main targets for the Kub air defense system were aircraft and cruise missiles with speeds up to 600 m/s (on collision courses).

The anti-aircraft missile system includes a self-propelled reconnaissance and guidance unit, a control post and 4 self-propelled launchers. Each TEL houses three 3М9 anti-aircraft guided missiles.

Ukrainian Kub SAMs

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine received more than twenty batteries of Kub anti-aircraft systems. Nevertheless, they were outdated, and the number of weapons in the Ukrainian army was reduced, so this equipment was quickly replaced by more modern Buk air defense systems with the last Kub systems withdrawn from the armed forces in the mid-2000s.

However, against the background of the Russian aggression outbreak in 2014, Ukraine began to actively increase the capabilities of the army, which led to the restoration and return of decommissioned weapons into service.

Thus, in 2019, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Viktor Muzhenko stated that the modernized Kub anti-aircraft missile systems were returning to the air defense of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Before returning to service, the system was tested at the Yagorlyk state test site in the Kherson region. The military conducted launches from the modernized Tor and Kub anti-aircraft missile systems.

Specialists of the Ukrainian Aerotechnika enterprise modernized the Kub air defense system. The modernization of the system to the 2K12M1-2D Kvadrat-2D level improved the technical characteristics and expanded the functionality of the SAM by implementing new algorithms for processing and displaying information about devices using digital signal processing with modern hardware components.

In modernized anti-aircraft missile systems, analog systems were changed to digital ones, which significantly increased the efficiency and operating time of the air defense system.

The fate of these systems is currently unknown. Over a year of the war since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, no cases of the appearance of these SAMs on the battlefield or simply in the expanses of Ukraine have been documented.