William LaPlante, US undersecretary of defense for acquisition and supply, said that as a result, Ukraine’s older fighter jets can now fit many Western weapons, according to The Telegraph.
Defense publication The War Zone noted that iPads or similar tablets could assist in so-called “Wild Weasel” missions.
“In this strategy, jet pilots lure enemy anti-aircraft defenses into pointing their radars at them. The radar waves are then traced back to their source and targeted by Ukrainian pilots with weapons such as the US AGM-88 high-speed anti-radar missile (HARM),” the publication said.
VIDEO: There is an iPad tablet in the cockpit of the Ukrainian Su-27 fighter jet
The tablets are said to be vital to the operation of several Western-supplied air-to-surface weapons, as Soviet-era Ukrainian fighter jets lack data interfaces to ensure seamless compatibility with the latest missiles.
The US Air Force developed the Wild Weasel strategy during the Vietnam War after the advent of Soviet surface-to-air missiles for anti-aircraft defense that used radar to identify targets.
The same can be said for other high-tech weapons, including French-supplied precision-guided aerial bombs and UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles, according to the Unian news agency.
Tablet computers can solve this problem. They can also be used for navigation and display critical data to help pilots successfully complete their missions.
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