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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.
Speaking in Madrid, Zelenskyy said Ukraine still urgently needs another seven of the systems to fend off Russian strikes against the power grid and civilian areas, as well as military targets, with devastating glide bombs that wreak wide destruction.
He said Ukraine needs two of the systems to protect Kharkiv, where Russia launched a cross-border offensive on May 10 that still has Ukrainian troops reeling.
“If we had these modern Patriot systems, (Russian) airplanes wouldn’t be able to fly close enough to drop the (glide) bombs on the civilian population and the military,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in the Spanish capital.
The decision comes as defense leaders from the U.S., Europe and other nations prepare for their monthly meeting on Ukraine’s security needs.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday that Ukraine’s need for air defense will be a topic at the meeting.
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For fucks sake can we just, like, given them a dozen or so? And a shitload of CRAMs? For fucks sake. Genuinely this pussy-footing around with the military aid to Ukraine is fucking infuriating and embarrassing.
No. It’s all about politics and “non-escallaction”.
The US doesn’t want to be seen as fighting this war.
US Vs Russia is a war nobody wants. Unlimited fire power would be easily framed as the US being an active participant.
Then at home Biden has an isolationist opponent framing him as a war-monger.
Afaik the US only has a dozen in operation itself that get shifted around gpobally where they are needed the most. So there dont seem to be too many around.
Pretty sure we have more than that in just the Metro DC area. We just don’t talk about them as loudly as Russia does about their IADS.
Also, we absolutely should be building more.
Good news, production was ramped up. Looks like Ukraine also is getting five more straight from the company this year, in addition to more coming from the US and Germany. I think the Netherlands sent one as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/us/politics/patriot-missiles-ukraine-war.html
US has 14 of them (well soon to be 13 I guess)
By my count, with the three Ukraine has, the two more being given now, five more from the company, should bring them up to 10 batteries by the end of the year?
While having a dozen in operation might be good, we need the ability to produce 100k of them in a month (including all the supply chain for that!). If the world gets into a war between any of NATO (US), Russia, China, India you can bet that missiles will be flying anywhere that is thought to be unprotected and so we need missile defense on all cities so that nothing is unprotected. The we of course changes depending on how is involved.
I said produce 100k in a month, not have them in stock. That is because technology changes. It is likely that when we (again not sure who the we is) needs this technology will have changed and so whatever existing systems we have are obsolete and useless. 100k systems would be enough to protect us (whoever we are) from today’s threats, but they may be scrap when war comes.
They cost a billion each to manufacture… Only 280 have ever been made…
100k a month would be 100 trillion dollars a year, might be a bit overkill for just one weapon type.
And that’s not even getting to all the people needed to staff a battery.
Anyways they did ramp up production, Ukraine is getting five more from the company of the 12 they can now build in a year. Should bring Ukraine up to ten batteries total by the end of the year including the gifted ones from the US and Germany.
Prolong the fighting to keep your enimies busy and you shouldn’t have to worry.
Such a strategy is deeply immoral, since it forces our ally to slowly grind their forces to a pulp
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.
