The United States will send Ukraine another Patriot missile system, two U.S. officials said Tuesday, answering Kyiv’s desperate calls for more air defenses as it battles an intense Russian assault on the northeastern Kharkiv region.
The officials said President Joe Biden has approved the move. It would be the second Patriot system that the U.S. has given to Ukraine, although the Pentagon has routinely provided an undisclosed number of missiles for the system. Other allies, including Germany, also have provided air defense systems as well as munitions for them.
The two U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been publicly announced. The decision was first reported by The New York Times.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy late last month pleaded for additional U.S.-made Patriot systems, arguing that they will help his forces fight the close to 3,000 bombs that he said Russia launches into the country every month.
Patriots probably aren’t actually an ideal counter to Russian aircraft.
They’re the longest-range anti-aircraft SAM the US has, but they’re really primarily intended for use against ballistic missiles.
The US really uses the Air Force to counter enemy aircraft.
Warsaw Pact SAMs have longer range.
My understanding is that the Franco-Italian SAMP/T – which was also intended for dual anti-ballistic-missile use, but hasn’t had luck intercepting Russian ballistic missiles – is probably a better match for picking off aircraft at range. The radar’s longer-range. It has a narrower cone, but that’s fine for picking off aircraft that you’ve identified. If you fire one of their Aster missiles, you aren’t giving up capability to stop a ballistic missile.
If Ukraine runs out of Patriots, they aren’t gonna be able to do anything about Russian ballistic missiles, as that’s their only counter to them. Those Russian glide bombs are limited to front line targets. But ballistic missiles can do deep interdiction.
There’s a ton of different Patriot flavors. PAC-2 GEMs are great at smoking aircraft. PAC-3s are great at anti-ballistic, but they’ll also ruin your day if it doesn’t want you flying near it.
Russia loves to brag about the extreme ranges their SAMs can supposedly reach. And sure, they can probably detect and reach as far as they say they do under ideal conditions… but actual combat is anything but ideal conditions. Given how poorly they’ve performed in Ukraine (a combination of the equipment itself, doctrine, and mediocre training), even their most cutting edge SAMs are getting smoked by gulf war vintage ATACMS.
Meanwhile, the US and allied nations tend to keep the specs of our much closer to the chest, and in fact often understate the performance. We’re not in a dick-swinging contest. If it flies, it dies, and both the Patriot system and AEGIS/SM-2/SM-3 naval SAMs (which, by the way, we’ve apparently started strapping to Super Hornets, so that’s neat) are incredibly deadly, effective, and probably a good bit better than the public specs say they are.
