Ukraine will receive the advanced US-built Patriot missile defense system to try to counter Russian attacks, the White House confirmed ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington on Wednesday.
Since the beginning of the war in February, many Western air defenses have been deployed — from shoulder-launched Stinger missiles to more advanced systems guided by radar and heat detection. All provide a comprehensive level of protection against different threats.
Patriot missiles are another step on that same path — and one that will challenge Moscow.
They aren’t a silver bullet, but they are extremely effective and expensive. A Patriot missile costs about $3 million (R$15.6 million) — three times the cost of a missile in a NASAMS (advanced surface-to-air missile system). Two of these pieces of equipment have been in operation in Ukraine for several weeks.
The new Patriot missile battery “will be a critical asset to defend the Ukrainian people against Russia’s barbaric attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure,” the White House said in a press release.
Patriots were used against Russian-made Scud missiles in Iraq during the first Gulf War and have been continuously developed since then by Raytheon Technologies. They come in batteries that include a command center, a radar station to detect threats, and launchers.
Target ranges vary between 40 km and 160 km depending on the type of missile used. And they’re called “point defense” systems: usually designed to defend specific areas, like cities or important infrastructure—in other words, they’re valuable assets.
No troops from the United States or NATO, the Western military alliance, can operate these systems inside Ukraine, so, as with other Western weapons, Ukrainian forces will have to be trained to use them — and that training will take place outside the country.
That may already be in the works, and the US military has said it will expand to Ukrainian forces in Germany starting in January.
Moscow has called any plan to send Patriots a provocation and an expansion of US military involvement in Ukraine. Russia indicated that the missiles would become what it called “legitimate targets” for attacks, something that has been said before in this war.
It’s hard to say exactly what effect the Patriot systems will have. They will certainly provide an additional layer of protection, but their size and cost mean that few units will be able to ship.
What is clear is that Ukraine’s aging surface-to-air missile systems, built in Russia, are gradually being replaced by more modern weapons supplied by the West, and that will provide comfort for Kiev but raise alarm bells in Moscow.
Text originally published here.
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