Raven

Britain took AIM-132 ASRAAM missiles that were sitting in storage awaiting disposal, bolted them to launch rails cut from retired Tornado, Hawk and Jaguar aircraft, and welded the assembly to a Supacat truck. The improvisation has been credited with more than 400 aerial targets over Ukraine.

Overview

Raven is a mobile short-range air-defence system developed by the UK Ministry of Defence with MBDA UK and the RAF's Air and Space Warfare Centre, built around the AIM-132 ASRAAM air-to-air missile adapted for ground launch and mounted on a Supacat HMT 600 6×6 high-mobility vehicle. It was created in 2022 as an urgent-requirement answer to Ukraine's air-defence shortfall, using two resources Britain had in surplus: ASRAAM rounds approaching disposal, and launch rails from long-retired combat aircraft.

The system has become the most operationally successful of the improvised air-defence designs sent to Ukraine — British reporting calls the category "FrankenSAM" — with 13 systems delivered and a claimed record of over 400 aerial targets destroyed by mid-2026 at a reported success rate around 70%. It is now in its fifth iteration in four years of service, and MBDA has begun turning the lessons into a deliberate low-cost SAM product line.

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