In a recent parliament meeting Wellington Koo‚ Taiwans defense minister made clear that his country dont need their old HAWK anti-aircraft missiles anymore. The U.S will get to choose what happens with these cold-war era weapons (which might end up helping Ukraine)
The global support for Ukraine has been huge since Russia started its attack bout 2 years ago: many countries gave weapons including some old-but-useful military stuff like F-16s from Netherlands. The situation with these surface-to-air missiles is pretty simple — Taiwan will follow the rules and give them back to US if asked
Taiwan has shown lots of support for Ukraine without sending direct military help; they see similar problems with their big neighbor China who says Taiwan is its territory. Last month Taiwan got a better deal anyway: they bought new NASAMS air-defense system from US for bout 2 billion dollars
The HAWK system — which stands for Homing All the Way Killer — can do some cool stuff even today:
- Works against low-flying targets
- Can hit things just 60 meters above ground
- Good at stopping small attack drones
- Got updates from different countries over years
These old Hawks might be perfect for Ukraine since they need weapons that can stop those cheap drones being used all the time. Even though its not the newest tech around its still pretty good at what it does — especially for the kind of fighting happening right now