April 24, 2025: Russian missile and drone attacks have been a common feature of the Ukraine War. Since the war began Russia has launched at least two dozen of these projectiles a day. NATO has supplied Ukraine large quantities of SAMP/T and Patriot missiles to defeat Russian attacks, along with equipment that makes possible improved detection and fire control, improved electronic warfare and F-16 fighters adapted to intercept drones. Facing all these defenses, the Russians discovered that their most effective weapon was short range ballistic missiles. There was not enough time to intercept these missiles and not enough air defense systems to cover all of Ukraine against such attacks. Fortunately Russia has only been able to launch 740 missiles a month at Ukrainian targets and only a dozen of these were the deadly short range ballistic missiles.

Early in the war, most of the Russian attacks were carried out by Iranian Shahed drones and Russian air launched guided missiles. The drones were noisy and flew low and slow. This made them easy to locate, even at night, and shoot down. Ukrainian air defenses, reinforced by NATO air defense systems, soon made it impossible for Russian warplanes to operate inside Ukraine. The Russians resorted to having their aircraft launch glide bombs from inside Russian territory. These bombs used GPS guidance which was soon neutralized by Ukrainian electronic warfare. Within seven months of the Russian invasion Ukrainian air defenses, including electronic warfare, were intercepting over 80 percent of Russian missiles as well as attack and reconnaissance drones.

Eventually the Russians switched most of their attacks to economic targets. This was harder to defend against because there were too many of these targets spread all over Ukraine. Given that Russia was only able to launch one missile or drone an hour, these attacks on economic targets did no significant damage. The Russians knew that and hoped to damage Ukrainian morale. That didn’t work either.

The wide variety of NATO supplied air defense equipment was enhanced by Ukrainian innovations in detection, fire control and electronic warfare. Among the air-defense weapons sent to Ukraine, the NASAMS system was the most anticipated because of its reputation. NASAMS is far superior to the similar Russian Buk M1 system Ukraine and Russia used, or anything else in its class. NASAM systems began arriving in Ukraine during November 2022 and, by late 2024, there were eight NASAMS batteries in Ukraine.

By 2025 there were be nine more NASAMS batteries for Ukraine as well as longer range AMRAAM ER missiles for it. NASAMS has been very effective against Russian missile attacks, often intercepting all the Russian missiles headed for an area defended by a NASAMS battery. The impact of NASAMS on Russian missile attacks led the Russians to try and detect and destroy NASAMS batteries or components of batteries. As of early 2024, only one NASAMS battery has come under heavy Russian attack and lost some components. So far NASAMS has intercepted over 500 hundred Russian missiles and drones. The latest version of NASAMS has a missile range of 50 kilometers and a target detection radar with a range of 120 kilometers. The older and larger Patriot system has a missile with a range of 120 kilometers. NASAMS systems are more compact and mobile than Patriot and the Ukrainians have found that NASAMS and Patriot systems complement each other. In Ukraine Russia is having a difficult time finding worthy targets that are not defended by NASAMS or Patriot.

NASAMS was a system developed by Norway in the early 1990s and entered service in 1998. Norway pioneered the use of American AMRAAM air-to-air missiles as surface-to-air weapons and developed the fire control and launcher equipment needed to make it all work. It was a simple but very effective use of air-to-air missiles for air defense. Other air-to-air missiles have been used for ground-based air defense systems, but the Norwegian version is seen as the best of the lot. Norway initially had six NASAMS batteries for its own defense. Eleven other nations, like Hungary, Spain, Holland, Chile, and the United States, Finland, Lithuania, and Ukraine also use NASAMS, and the system is still in production.

The NASAMS was initially developed for the Norwegian Air Force by Norwegian firm Kongsberg, in cooperation with American partner Raytheon, which produces AMRAAM. A major upgrade, NASAMS 2, officially entered service in 2007 and since then it has gained interest in more nations.

NASAMS’ popularity is due to a truly open architecture that, unlike competing systems, allows NASAMS to be used with a wide variety of radars. Initially NASAMS used the American made MPQ-64 Sentinel radar but some customers requested a system that can work with different radars and air-to-air missiles. NASAMS has been tested and configured to work with more than 30 different radar systems and can fire just about any air-to-air missile that can be fired from NATO aircraft. All that is required is modifications to the size and electrical connections in the NASAMS launcher cells and software modification of the fire control system. Since NATO has long-established standards for NATO weapons, NASAMS takes full advantage of this.

So far NASAMS has been configured with AIM-120 AMRAAM and its longer-range ER variant in addition to the heat seeking AIM-9X Sidewinder and the European IRIS-T. The last one is an interesting story. Norway has a big stock of IRIS-T for their F-16 fighters, but the new Norwegian F-35 is not compatible with IRIS-T, so they decided to use this very modern European missile as an anti-aircraft missile in NASAMS systems. This example clearly shows how flexible this system is while the competitor systems are “tied” to a limited number of missiles and radars.

A typical NASAMS battery consists of 12 launcher vehicles, each carrying six missiles, eight radar vehicles, one fire control center, and one tactical control vehicle. NASAMS does not provide protection for a large area because the max range of its missiles is 30-50 kilometers while range of battery radar target detection is up t0 160 kilometers. NASAMS batteries will be used to protect major cities. NASAMS is being used alongside existing Ukrainian S300 systems and American Patriot batteries Ukraine received as well. Patriot was especially effective at intercepting ballistic missiles.