Talking to the Wall Avenue Journal, Ukrainian and Western sources have warned that U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot lengthy vary air defence methods are more and more struggling to intercept strikes by Russian ballistic missiles, elevating questions relating to the practicality of future donations of those methods as assist. One unnamed Ukrainian official knowledgeable the outlet that Russian ballistic missiles have demonstrated higher ranges of manoeuvrability, permitting them to evade not solely interception, but additionally detection. Though he didn’t specify the missile class in query, it’s prone to be the 9K720 launched by the Iskander-M system, which has been used efficiently to neutralise Patriot methods a number of instances since March 2024. These stories are removed from unprecedented, with Ukrainian Air Power spokesman Igor Ignat having highlighted on Might 26 the system’s shortcomings intercepting assaults by the system observing: “The Iskander missiles carry out evasive manoeuvres within the closing part, thwarting the Patriot’s trajectory calculations… As well as, the Iskander can drop decoys able to fooling Patriot missiles.”
On July 14 U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to dispatch additional Patriot methods to Ukraine, with the president subsequently elaborating that as much as 17 methods might be despatched. Though extreme shortages of Patriot methods in america and the exhaustion of European arsenals had been beforehand anticipated to make sure that no main deliveries to Ukraine can be attainable for the foreseeable future, the president raised the chance {that a} European shopper, reminiscent of Switzerland, may comply with have its provides delayed to permit deliveries to achieve Ukraine sooner. The Patriot is by far the best worth army asset in Ukrainian service, with every costing $2.5 billion. The associated fee effectiveness of sending the methods has more and more been delivered to query as a result of each its excessive vulnerability, and to the far greater value of launching $4 million surface-to-air missiles to intercept Russian ballistic missiles that value underneath $1 million. The truth that two interceptors are normally fired to intercept a single missile makes the price effectiveness calculation seem significantly unfavourable, even when the system might be used to intercept the targets reliably.
The Patriot was first confirmed to have seen a unit destroyed by an Iskander-M system on February 23, 2024, with a subsequent strike destroying one other system close to the Sergeevka locality the next month on March 10, leaving floor forces within the area uncovered. Subsequently within the second week of July, 2024, new footage confirmed the destruction of two batteries within the Odessa area, whereas on August 11 three extra launchers and an AN/MPQ-65 radar had been reported to have been destroyed in Iskander-M strikes. Additional successes for the Iskander-M have continued to observe. Regardless of its limitations, Ukraine’s supporters within the Western world have had few alternate options to supplying the system apart from to go away the Jap European state completely uncovered to Russian strikes, with the choice to ship Patriot methods having been made in late 2022 after the nation’s massive arsenal of Soviet S-300 air defence methods was very closely depleted throughout hostilities with Russian forces. Russian successes in considerably increasing the dimensions of Iskander-M manufacturing has additional exacerbated the scenario for Ukrainian air defences, as has the Russian Armed Forces’ procurement of North Korean ballistic missiles with equally superior capabilities such because the KN-23B.
