U.S. President Donald Trump has acknowledged that as much as 17 MIM-104 Patriot lengthy vary air defence techniques might be donated to equip the Ukrainian Armed Forces. “A few international locations who’ve Patriots are going to swap them out. We have now one nation that has 17 Patriots on the point of be shipped. They’re not going to want them. So we’re going to work once more the place the 17 will go, or an enormous portion of the 17 will go,” he acknowledged, including “That might be carried out in a short time.” It stays unsure which nation was being referred to, as no nation is understood to have ordered such giant portions of techniques, which might collectively price near $40 billion. One risk is that the president was referring to launchers, reasonably than techniques, as every system is normally comprised of eight launchers. Though extreme shortages of Patriot techniques in the USA and the exhaustion of European arsenals had been beforehand anticipated to make sure that no main deliveries to Ukraine can be forthcoming for the foreseeable future, the likelihood stays {that a} European consumer, resembling Switzerland, agreeing to have its provides delayed to permit the techniques to succeed in Ukraine sooner.
Additional elaborating on plans to produce Patriot techniques, the President Trump noticed: “We make one of the best gear, one of the best missiles, one of the best of all the things.”“The European nations know that, and we made a deal at the moment … the place we’re going to be sending them weapons, however they’re going to be paying for them,”he added. A number one uncertainty stays the extent to which the USA and different purchasers for the Patriot will likely be prepared to delay provides to their very own forces to equip Ukraine, as this might enable a a lot higher proportion of the comparatively restricted productive capability for the techniques to be allotted to arming the Jap European nation. The U.S. Army’s shortages of surface-to-air missiles from giant scale provides to Ukraine had been exacerbated by an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ballistic missile strike on a U.S. Air Pressure facility, Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar, on June 23, which noticed Patriot techniques launch dozens of interceptors to shoot down the incoming barrage.
The associated fee effectiveness of investing in provides of Patriot techniques to Ukraine has repeatedly been delivered to query, as a result of each its large expense at near $2.5 billion per system, and as a result of vital efficiency deficiencies which have been demonstrated. Patriots have suffered excessive attrition charges in fight, with the Russian Iskander-M ballistic missilesystem having been used to focus on the launcher, command, and radar automobiles, and havingbeen singled out in Ukrainian Air Pressure stories for its capability to evade interception. The Russian ballistic missile system was first confirmed to have efficiently destroyed a Patriot system on February 23, 2024, with a subsequent strike destroying one other system close to the Sergeevka locality the next month. New footage in July 2024 confirmed the destruction of two batteries within the Odessa area. On August 11 three extra batteries and an AN/MPQ-65 radar had been reported destroyed in Iskander-M strikes. One of many Iskander-M’s newer successes noticed the destruction of the Patriot’s AN/MPQ-65 multifunctional radar station, fight management cabin, and missile launch automobiles within the Dnepropetrovsk area.
