Patriot Missiles Shooting Down Russian ICBMs Become Hero of Ukraine

They are working as intended, shooting down virtually every missile Russia shoots at Ukraine. JL 

James Marson and colleagues report in the Wall Street Journal:

Forty years after it was brought into service, the Patriot air-defense system is finally doing what it was designed for. It is destroying incoming missiles and other aerial threats in Europe and proving indispensable to the Ukrainian forces defending their ground troops, cities and critical infrastructure. Combining the Patriot with other Western air-defense systems as well as Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons, Ukraine is now fending off most aerial threats against Kyiv, from ballistic and cruise missiles to drones.

Around 3:30 a.m. one recent morning, more than a dozen Russian missiles flashed on the radar screens of the Ukrainian air-defense crew defending this capital city.

The missiles were coursing toward Kyiv, some as fast as six times the speed of sound and many heading directly for the crew’s missile battery.

The Ukrainians didn’t panic, their commander said in an interview. They didn’t have time.

But they did have a U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system, which days earlier had, for the first time, knocked down an ultrafast Kinzhal ballistic missile. Also known as the Kh-47, the Kinzhal is one of Russia’s most advanced weapons.

 

Early that morning, May 16, the Patriot’s radar detected the missiles, including six Kinzhals, at a distance of about 125 miles. The system’s computer tracked the missiles and launched interceptors, destroying all of them, the last at a distance of about 9 miles—seconds before impact.

“No one was 100% sure that the Patriot was capable of destroying a Kh-47 hypersonic missile,” said Col. Serhiy Yaremenko, commander of the 96th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, which defends Kyiv. “Ukrainians proved it.”

Forty years after it was brought into service, the Patriot air-defense system is finally doing what it was designed for. It is destroying incoming missiles and other aerial threats in Europe and proving indispensable to the Ukrainian forces defending their ground troops, cities and critical infrastructure. Ukraine’s political and military leadership have lauded the system as the only one capable of tackling the threat from Russian ballistic missiles, which the Kremlin had boasted couldn’t be stopped. Combining the Patriot with other Western air-defense systems as well as Ukraine’s Soviet-era weapons, Ukraine is now fending off most aerial threats against Kyiv, from ballistic and cruise missiles to drones.

Each Patriot system costs about $1 billion and takes two years to build, while the interceptors run as high as $4 million apiece, according to Pentagon budget documents.

The interceptors’ cost and limited availability requires Ukraine’s operators to make careful choices. “What are you trying to shoot down?” said a former Patriot operator now working in the defense sector. 

While air-defense systems including Nasams and Hawk can take care of Russia’s low-flying cruise missiles and relatively inexpensive Iranian drones, Ukraine has struggled to counter ballistic missiles, which are initially powered by a rocket, then arc toward their target. The Kinzhal, or Dagger in Russian, is launched from an aircraft, making it harder to track.

AN/MPQ-65 Radar

Can relay tracking data on more than 100 targets to the Patriot system’s Engagement Control Station

Can detect aircraft up to 62 miles away and ballistic missiles more than 100 miles away

Source: Army Recognition
Jemal R. Brinson and Peter Champelli/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

To help tackle that threat, the U.S. and Germany pledged to send one Patriot system each, and the Netherlands promised to send two additional launchers.

Ukraine sent around 90 soldiers to the U.S. to train on the Patriot, in an accelerated 10-week program that the Army said was completed ahead of schedule. Typically training courses stretch from 16 weeks for fire-control operators and up to nine months for maintenance staff, defense executives said.

The Ukrainians immediately saw the advantage over their Soviet-era systems, said Yaremenko, including the Patriot’s greater level of automation and integration.

 

“If you buy a car from 1989 and then move to a car from 2020, you will probably feel a difference,” he said. “It’s a spaceship.”

 

Russian officials criticized the U.S. and allies on the decision to send Patriots, but said they wouldn’t be able to stop Russian missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the Patriot in December as “quite an old system.”

“Fine, let them deliver it,” he told reporters. “We’ll smack the Patriot as well.”

The Patriots arrived in Ukraine in April, a few weeks after Russia launched a barrage of dozens of missiles, including six Kinzhals, at Ukraine. On May 4, the Ukrainians used a Patriot system to down a Kinzhal.

Yaremenko said his troops didn’t have time to celebrate, as Russia was launching almost nightly strikes aimed, in part, at exhausting Ukraine’s stocks of interceptor missiles.

Russia’s efforts are expensive, he said, as the cost of its missiles can run to millions of dollars each, and they are being intercepted before they hit their targets.

On Friday, the Biden administration announced a new, $2.1 billion arms package for Ukraine. At the top of the list: additional munitions for Ukraine’s Patriots.