Many of the 2,700 Strela shoulder-launched missiles shipped to Ukraine from Germany may not be functional, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported Friday.
According to the report, cited in the Daily Sabah, some 700 of the 2,700 shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles shipped to Ukraine this week are no longer operational because they had been in storage for so long.
The Times of Israel reported Thursday that the 2,700 missiles were sent along with 1,000 anti-tank missiles and 500 surface-to-air rockets to help the Ukrainians fight the Russians who invaded the country.
The Strela missiles are Soviet-made, and have been stored for about 35 years, according to the report, and were used to defend Soviet-controlled East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Miltary-today.com describes the missiles as being developed as a ''Man-Portable Air Defense System'' (MANPADS) in 1968, during the Cold War. First deployed in 1974, they were widely used by the Soviet armed forces in the Warsaw Pact nations of the time.
The batch sent to Ukraine, Daily Sabah reported, belonged to the National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany.
They are designed to ''see'' infrared energy and guide itself using the ''hot'' signatures of jet engines to find its target.
The minimum launch time from its ''carrying position'' is about 12 seconds, according to the article.
Once set on the user's shoulder, launches can be reduced to between 6 and 8 seconds, with a reload time of 25 seconds.
They were blocked from use by Germany's federal office for equipment in 2012 because of "microcracks in the ammunition's propellant charge, which led to corrosion/oxidation," the Daily Sabah reported.
Der Spiegel noted that many of the wooden boxes used to store the missiles were ''so moldy'' that soldiers had to wear protective equipment to enter the storage facility to inventory them.
The other 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles arrived in Ukraine on Wednesday, the article said.
Germany's decision to send the arms to Ukraine reverses its yearslong foreign policy of not sending arms to war zones around the world, the Times of Israel reported.
NATO partners in the Netherlands and Estonia have approved their own shipments of weapons to Ukraine that come from German or East German stock, the publication reported.
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