The United States plans to hand over the first NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine already in November.

This was stated by the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during a briefing on Thursday.

The head of the Pentagon emphasized that Ukraine now needs air defense systems more than anything.

The official noted that the US Department of Defense and allies were pushing hard to get Ukraine the relevant weapons.

At the last meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, known as Ramstein, a number of countries volunteered to provide such systems as soon as possible.

“We really emphasized this and some countries immediately responded by providing capabilities. We’re pushing hard to get them NASAMS systems, and we expect that early next month weʼll be able to give them such systems and train Ukrainian forces,” Lloyd Austin said.

The head of the Pentagon stressed that Spain had decided to transfer HAWK air defense systems to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Now it is necessary to train the Ukrainian military to operate with HAWK systems, and we continue to insist that countries, wherever possible, provide Ukraine with as much air defense as possible as soon as possible,” Austin emphasized.

As previously reported, the Pentagon is trying to speed up the delivery of NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine amid the Russian attacks on cities and infrastructure. This will make it possible to better repel attacks, including those by Iranian “Shahed-136” kamikaze drones used by the Russian Federation.

The systems are currently being manufactured by Raytheon in a joint partnership with Norway’s Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace. The US is now hoping to complete manufacturing two of those systems by the end of October or early November. Once the systems are completed, they will be flown to a nearby country and then shipped by land to Ukraine.

Raytheon’s CEO Greg Hayes later said in an interview with CNBC that Raytheon has transferred two NASAMS systems for Ukraine to the US government.

The US announced the transfer of two NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine in July of this year. Later, on August 24, it was announced that 6 more systems would be delivered.