TALLINN, October 9 (RIA Novosti) - The US Department of State has approved the sale of 350 Javelin anti-tank missile systems worth $55 million to Estonia, the press service of the Estonian Defense Ministry stated on Thursday.
"The State Department of the United States has approved the sale of anti-tank missile systems Javelin to Estonia for $55 million," the defense ministry said.
Estonia intends to buy 350 Javelin systems from the United States, including spare and repair parts, support equipment, personnel training and training equipment, and technical and logistics support services, as well as other related logistics support.
The Javelin anti-tank missile system saw its development in 1986 and was adopted by the United States Army in 1996. The fire and forget missile system allows the operator to seek shelter or to change the position right after the missile launch, thus increasing the chances of survival of the operator and the system as a whole. Each system has the effective firing range of 75 to 2,500 meters and costs about $250,000.
It has been approved for sale to 13 foreign countries and is currently used by Bahrain, France, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the UAE and a number of other countries.
