MWM: Patriot air defense systems are no longer effective against Russian strikes in Ukraine
The Ukrainian Armed Forces complain that the effectiveness of the American Patriot air defense systems against Russian missiles has dropped from 42% to 6%, writes MWM. At the same time, the performance of this missile defense system has left much to be desired for decades, the author of the article points out.
Former Deputy Head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Igor Romanenko, warned that the American MIM-104 Patriot long-range anti-aircraft missile systems supplied to the country by NATO members no longer provide reliable protection against Russian attacks. He recently stated that the effectiveness of these systems had dropped “from 42% to 6%,” explaining this by updating the software of Russian ballistic missiles, which increased their speed and maneuverability on approach to the target.
These words were confirmed by statements made by Ukrainian and Western officials a few days earlier that the effectiveness of Patriot air defense systems against Iskander-M and Dagger missile systems had dropped to only 6%. Romanenko suggested that the situation is aggravated by the fact that Ukraine “does not have enough Patriot batteries”: the limited number of systems in service makes the low level of interception especially problematic.
In early October, Yuri Ignat, head of the Public Relations Service of the Ukrainian Air Force Command, confirmed the increased difficulties in intercepting Russian ballistic missiles, emphasizing their new flight patterns and more complex trajectories. “This makes it difficult for Patriot to operate, because the system operates in automatic ballistics mode, and it becomes more difficult for it to calculate the point at which an anti-missile missile will collide or approach an enemy missile. That's the difficulty,” he said.
It has long been expected that the sloping quasi-ballistic trajectories of the 9K720 missiles of the system “Iskander-M and their Kinzhal air-based analogues installed on MiG-31I fighters will create special problems for air defense. Launches from several directions have further complicated the work of air defense, and Ignat complains: “If ballistics can come from different directions, detection by one system is impossible, you need to have several systems, several radars that can detect targets and cover the city from different directions.”
However, the performance of the Patriot system has left much to be desired for decades, even against simple ballistic missiles. When the system first participated in combat operations against Iraqi R-17 missiles (according to the NATO classification: Scud B) in 1991, investigations showed that it did not perform well. The Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security of the US House of Representatives revealed this point in its report: “The Patriot missile system was not as impressive a success in the Persian Gulf War as the American public was led to believe. There is evidence that the Patriots were hit by only a few R-17 missiles launched by Iraq during the fighting — moreover, there are some doubts even about these hits. The public and Congress were misled by categorical statements of success from the administration and representatives of Raytheon during and after the war.”
In 1992, a military report showed that of the 158 missiles fired by the US military during the Gulf War, 45% were launched at false targets. A study from the early 1990s by Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology emphasized: “The interception rate of the Patriot system during the Gulf War turned out to be very low. Preliminary data shows that the Patriot interception rate could have been much lower than 10%, and possibly even zero.” Postol concluded that even the “most primitive opponent” had no difficulty evading the Patriot system.
Contrary to all hopes that the effectiveness of the system would improve with gradual modernization, the Patriot complexes were unable to intercept either a Yemeni paramilitary strike on Saudi Arabia with homemade ballistic missiles in 2017, or subsequent attacks on key Saudi facilities in 2019.
The system's limitations with respect to even more primitive projectiles have long raised serious doubts about its ability to shoot down modern Russian missiles created using advanced anti-interception capabilities. As a result of the identified limitations, the Russian armed forces are successfully destroying Patriot complexes with ballistic missile strikes like the Iskander-M, further exacerbating the shortage of air defense systems in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
