This is a new sign of the upscaling of the Ukrainian army. Long reluctant to give up their most sophisticated military equipment, for fear of an escalation with Russia, the United States confirmed, on Wednesday, December 21, the delivery of a Patriot anti-aircraft defense system to troops in kyiv. An announcement made on the sidelines of the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington, and intended to reassure on the continuation of Western support, three hundred days after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. “What we are doing, what we continue to do, is to ensure that Ukrainians have the means to defend themselves effectively against Russian aggression”justified a senior American official.
Designed in the 1960s, the Patriot is considered one of the best anti-aircraft defense devices in Western armies. It has been deployed many times in theaters of operations, by the United States but also by one of the seventeen countries to have it, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. “The Patriot is the workhorse of the US military’s air and missile defense, a key component of US power projection”remember the American think tank CSIS, in a note published on December 16. It is the Patriots who protect, for example, the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport in southeastern Poland, through which a large part of Western military aid to Ukraine currently passes.
Regularly modernized since its first commissioning in 1982, the Patriot system is reputed to be effective against aircraft but above all against ballistic and cruise missiles, which Russia makes intensive use of in Ukraine to destroy the country’s energy infrastructure. On the other hand, it has more difficulty “engaging” low-flying drones, a weakness shared by many ground-to-air systems. Some 90 operators are needed to operate a Patriot battery, which includes radar, a command center, an electrical generator and up to eight launchers with four to sixteen missiles each, depending on their nature. Washington recognizes that” some time “ training, estimated at a minimum of three months by specialists, will be necessary before the Ukrainian military can use it.
Three quarters of Russian projectiles destroyed
This Patriot battery completes the previous deliveries of surface-to-air defense equipment made by the West. In early October, Germany sent an IRIS-T medium-range battery to Ukraine, three more of which were promised by Berlin. In November, the United States, Spain and Norway delivered eight Nasams long-range systems and an unknown number of Aspide short-range batteries. For its part, France has sent two Crotale short-range batteries out of the twelve it holds, but these have not yet been deployed on the ground.
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