The Ukrainian military website has released pictures showing the new Ukrainian-made Hrim-2 also called Grom-2, or Thunder-2, a short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile, according to Army Recognition, a global defense security technology and military news portal.
The new missile will have a range from 50 to 280 km, Army Recognition said. The missile system is mounted on a 6×6 military truck which is used as TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher) mobile unit.
The Hrim-2 is fitted with two missile launcher units mounted at the rear of a truck trailer. The new missile system, reportedly financed by Saudi Arabia, is designed to compete with Russia’s advanced Iskander short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) system. Saudi Arabia has been reported to have covertly financed Research & Development work on Hrim-2, to the tune of about $40 million.
In the summer of 2016, Ukrainian media reported that military engineers from the Yuzhnoye (Pivdenne) Design Bureau and the Pavlograd Chemical Plant had begun development work on the Hrim-2 system using money from a mysterious foreign client. That secret client was soon revealed to be Saudi Arabia, whose investors provided around $40 million for the design and development of the surface-to-surface tactical short-range missile system.
Work on the Hrim complex was first announced at Arms and Security defense exhibition in Kyiv in 2014. A year later it was announced that mass production of the weapon could begin as soon as 2018.
The Hrim-2 is a mobile short-range ballistic missile system fully designed and developed in Ukraine by Yuzhnoye Design Office and Makarov Pivdenny Machine-Building Plant. According to some military websites, Ukraine has already performed the first test launch of its new tactical ballistic missile in the second half of 2017. (UNIAN/Business World Magazine)
