WASHINGTON, December 2 – RIA Novosti. Greg Hayes, CEO of manufacturing company Raytheon, said on Thursday that the United States and its NATO allies are in talks with a number of Middle Eastern countries to hand over NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine.

“NASASMS systems have been deployed in the Middle East, and some of our NATO allies, along with the United States, are currently negotiating with several countries in the Middle East to send them to Ukraine using NASAMS,” Hayes said. quotes Policy pressure.

The challenge facing the United States is to reach an agreement to ship these anti-aircraft missile systems to Ukraine in three to six months, according to a senior defense contractor manager. As Hayes points out, such a transfer of NASAMS from one part of the world to another would require much less time and resources than making it from scratch.

“The production of these complexes takes 24 months, but this does not mean that they will be delivered (to Ukraine) in 24 months,” the source said. He declined to disclose which specific countries in the Middle East the US is discussing with the NASAMS transfer. At the same time, according to open data from the Pentagon, only two countries in the region have purchased these systems from the United States: Oman and Qatar.