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> The Patriot system has been around since the mid-1980s after being recommended for deployment to Europe by the The Army and in 1985 passed a NATO tactical evaluation and became fully operational.
✓ It was not until 1991, during the Gulf War, when its ability to intercept and destroy Iraqi SCUD missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia was celebrated. According to Raytheon, the system is operated or at least bought by 17 nations which includes Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Poland...
While the latest Patriot systems are vastly most capable than the much-maligned versions that were employed during the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, there is simply no such thing as a perfect missile defense shield, something the War Zone has explored in detail in the past.
Posted: 22 hours ago
Posted: 24 hours ago
Here’s What A Patriot Missile Does — And Why It’s Important To Ukraine
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Anthony Tellez
Topline
"In a $1.85 billion aid package to Ukraine, the Biden Administration is including the most advanced air defense system in the U.S. arsenal, the Patriot system, which Ukraine had been asking for, and some believe could be a game-changer in Russia's ongoing invasion of its neighbor.
Key Facts
The Patriot, which stands for Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target is built by Raytheon Technologies Corp., and is a surface-to-air missile and anti-ballistic system thought to be one of the most sophisticated in the world.
What makes the Patriot one of the most sought-out defense systems is its capability to stop cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles before they reach their intended target, as well as target aircrafts.
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The system is mounted on trucks, making them mobile, and each system has a battery capable of holding up to four missiles with a total of eight launchers, and has a range between 20 to 100 miles.
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Ukraine has been asking for the system since Russia ramped up its missile strikes on the recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson, while also targeting power plants and other energy infrastructure, leaving millions without heat or electricity.
What the system means for Ukraine is a more advanced line of defense to protect itself from further Russian missile strikes.
The announcement to provide the air defense system was made on the same day Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met with President Biden and members of Congress — his first trip outside the Ukraine since the war began.
✓ The Biden Administration had already been in talks to send the Patriot, reports The Washington Post, and that the Pentagon was preparing to send the system over, despite prior hesitation to do so to avoid the ire of Russia.
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Though the U.S. has agreed to deploy the system, it will take months before it touches Ukrainian soil as it first will reach Germany, reports Reuters, and will take months to train Ukrainian soldiers on how to operate the system, U.S. officials told Reuters.
✓ President Vladimir Putin has already dismissed the patriot missile as “a pretty old system” in a press conference he held Thursday in Moscow, and said he was confident it would not pose a threat.
Crucial Quote
"Over the past three hundred days, the Kremlin has tried and failed to wipe Ukraine off the map. Now, Russia is trying to weaponize winter by freezing and starving Ukrainian civilians and forcing families from their homes," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement. "In response. . . the United States is providing critical new and additional military capabilities to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia's ongoing brutal and unprovoked assault."
Contra
One of the main concerns about sending the Patriot to Ukrainian forces is the logistics of be noing able to operate the system.
Just one Patriot battery would require 90 soldiers to operate and it comes with computers, a phased array radar, a control system and power generating equipment, according to the U.S. Army. Even though it was approved to be sent, it will realistically take some time before it reaches Ukraine soil as the Ukrainian forces must be trained on how to operate the system first which may take months. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a retired commander of the U.S. Army Europe, told CNN there are some unrealistic expectations of how effective the system could be. “These systems don’t pick up and move around the battlefield,” Hertling told CNN. “If anyone thinks this is going to be a system that is spread across a 500-mile border between Ukraine and Russia, they just don’t know how the system operates.”
RELATED CONTENT
– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington on Wednesday for his first known overseas trip since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began about 300 days ago.
– U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Zelenskyy at the White House and announced that the U.S. will send Ukraine a Patriot missile defense system as part of an additional $1.8 billion assistance package.
– Kremlin said providing Ukraine with weapons would not contribute to settling the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv.
– Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited troops "on the frontline" and "talked to servicemen and thanked them," Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
– Russian officials and a delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency held a new round of consultations in Moscow on Thursday on cooperation in ensuring the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Washington on Wednesday for his first known overseas trip since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began about 300 days ago.
– U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Zelenskyy at the White House and announced that the U.S. will send Ukraine a Patriot missile defense system as part of an additional $1.8 billion assistance package.
– Kremlin said providing Ukraine with weapons would not contribute to settling the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv.
– Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited troops "on the frontline" and "talked to servicemen and thanked them," Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
– Russian officials and a delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency held a new round of consultations in Moscow on Thursday on cooperation in ensuring the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The Patriot missiles going to Ukraine have a long wartime history
A Patriot missile system seen in Croatia in 2021 as part of an exercise. US Army / Alexandra Shea
"On December 21, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke before the United States Congress, on his first trip out of his country since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Speaking against tyranny and drawing a direct analogy to American successes in the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Saratoga and World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, Zelensky promised to see Ukraine through to victory. He also asked for weapons. He asked for artillery, tanks, and planes, and he asked for one weapon specifically by name: Patriot missiles.
“If your Patriots stop the Russian terror against our cities, it will let Ukrainian patriots work to the full to defend our freedom,” said Zelensky. “When Russia cannot reach our cities by its artillery, it tries to destroy them with missile attacks.”
On the same day, the Department of Defense announced it was sending Ukraine its first Patriot air defense battery, along with missiles for it.
Missile defense
There are, broadly, two ways that militaries can use long-range explosives in war. The first is specific attacks, trying to find military bases or ammunition depots, fixed targets with clear impact on the ability to fight a war. Another is to use bombardment as a weapon of punishment, to inflict pain generally on a population, hoping that the destruction and demoralization hastens victory. Cruise missiles, which can be quite precise weapons, can serve the latter function when fired in barrages at targets far away.
Stopping cruise missiles is hard, in part because of their long range and ability to change direction in flight. Missile defense, which are systems that pair sensors like radar with interceptors like missiles, is one way to stop some of the attacks. Missile defense is a hard problem, even when only talking about missiles with conventional (non-nuclear) warheads, but it’s also a technology that has been developed for decades.
In November, the Department of Defense announced it was joining Spain in supplying Ukraine with HAWK missile interceptors. These weapons were first developed in the 1950s, deployed in the 1960, and upgraded versions still in use by many nations today. HAWKs are useful against aircraft, and they destroyed planes and helicopters when fired by Kuwaiti forces against Iraq in 1990.
Patriot missiles
While the United States retained HAWKs in its inventory and other nations deployed them, Patriot missiles have been the standard of interception for a long time. A Patriot missile battery consists of launchers, missiles, a command room to control firing, and a radar to identify and track targets. Once a target, like a plane or a missile, is detected for intercept, the operators fire in response, and then the Patriot missile flies to intercept, its own sensors guiding it along the course. Early Patriot missiles would intercept targets by exploding near them. Modern Patriot missiles destroy their targets in a physical collision.
Patriot missiles also had a major debut in the 1991 Gulf War against Scuds, a ballistic missile fired by Iraq, though that debut should come with caveats.
“During the 1991 Gulf War, the public was led to believe the [sic] that the Patriot had near-perfect performance, intercepting 45 of 47 Scud missiles,” wrote Jeffrey Lewis of Middlebury Institute of International Studies in 2019. “The U.S. Army later revised that estimate down to about 50 percent — and even then, it expressed ‘higher’ confidence in only about one-quarter of the cases. A pesky Congressional Research Service employee noted that if the Army had correctly applied its own assessment methodology consistently, the number would be far lower. (Reportedly that number was one — as in one lousy Scud missile downed.)”
Patriot missiles have improved considerably since then. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Patriot missiles were much more effective at intercepting ballistic missiles than they were in 1991, though there were still limits to their performance. The missiles have seen extensive use by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, intercepting missiles, rockets, and drones fired into the countries by forces in Yemen as part of that ongoing war. Israel has also used Patriot missiles to shoot down a Syrian fighter-bomber.
Part of the challenge of using Patriot missiles is that they are made to destroy big threats, like bombers and ballistic missiles, while also being used to destroy smaller targets, like drones. In his speech before Congress, Zelensky said “Iranian deadly drones sent to Russia in hundreds — in hundreds became a threat to our critical infrastructure.”
These drones, most especially the self-detonating Shahed-136s, are used like cruise missiles to barrage a target from afar, but built from much cheaper parts.
“The high cost per missile and the relatively small number of missiles in a battery means that Patriot operators cannot shoot at every target,” wrote Mark Cancian and Tom Karako of CSIS, a think tank, earlier this month. “High-value Russian aircraft and ballistic missiles would be appropriate targets. Shooting $4 million missiles at $250,000 Russian cruise missiles might be justified if those missiles would hit sensitive targets. Shooting a $4 million missile at a $50,000 Iranian Shahed-136 drone would probably not.”
So long as Russia launches or threatens to launch cruise missiles into Ukraine, Patriot missiles can have a role in stopping the severity of the attack. To comprehensively deal with threats to the country, Ukraine can incorporate the Patriots into a holistic and layered defense, with everything from retaliatory rocket strikes to “threat emitters” that confuse sensors.
When it comes to stopping attacks, Ukraine may need not to use just Patriots, but Vampires—which are truck-mounted drone interceptors—too."
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