The UK has officially unveiled the Gravehawk, a new surface-to-air missile system specifically designed for Ukraine.

Axar.az reports that this information was published by Forces News.

Gravehawk has been developed from scratch in just 18 months and will be used to combat Russian aircraft, missiles and drones.

The system is housed inside an ordinary ISO shipping container, meaning it can be quickly deployed on the back of a lorry, known as a Drops vehicle.

Once on the ground, the roof of the container can be rolled back to reveal the missile system inside, which is made up of two weapons rails taken from Soviet-era fighter jets such as the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker.

And that part of the design is key because it allows the system to fire Cold War-designed Vympel R-73 missiles, known to Nato as the AA-11 Archer.

These missiles, which are able to reach speeds of Mach 2.5 and have a range of 20 miles, are short-range weapons that are usually used for air-to-air combat.

What British engineers have done is adapt these R-73s so they can be fired from a ground-based system instead.

Gravehawk took less than a year-and-a-half to develop at a cost of £6m.