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CNN: Biden administration finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense systems to Ukraine [1]
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Date: 2022-12-13
Patriot missile defense system
CNN is reporting that the Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine, which has been pressing for advanced air defense systems to counter the barrage of Russian missile attacks targeting key infrastructure across the country.
CNN quoted two U.S. officials and a senior administration official as saying the announcement about supplying the missile defense system to Ukraine could be made as soon as this week. The plan still needs t be approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before it is sent to President Joe Biden to sign, but the officials told CNN that Austin’s approval is expected.
The CNN report added:
It is not clear how many missile launchers will be sent but a typical Patriot battery includes a radar set that detects and tracks targets, computers, power generating equipment, an engagement control station and up to eight launchers, each holding four ready to fire missiles. Once the plans are finalized, the Patriots are expected to ship quickly in the coming days and Ukrainians will be trained to use them at a U.S. Army base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, officials said. Ukraine has been asking for the system for months but the logistical challenges of delivering it and operating it are immense. Despite those obstacles, “the reality of what is going on the ground” led the administration to make the decision, the senior administration official told CNN, noting the continuing intense Russian missile barrages. Unlike smaller air defense systems, Patriot missile batteries need much larger crews, requiring dozens of personnel to properly operate them. The training for Patriot missile batteries normally takes multiple months, a process the United States will now carry out under the pressure of near-daily aerial attacks from Russia. The system is widely considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend airspace against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles as well as some aircraft. Because of its long-range and high-altitude capability, it can potentially shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine.
In recent months, the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with mid-range defensive National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems in recent months.
Patriot batteries have already been deployed in Poland, which borders Ukraine, to bolster the NATO member’s air defense systems. There are Patriot batteries in more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Israel and Germany.
Last month US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that the US and other allies are “very focused” on providing air defense systems to Ukraine.
“We’re working to make sure that the Ukrainians get those systems as quickly as possible but also as effectively as possible, making sure that they are trained on them, making sure they have the ability to maintain them and all of that has to come together and it is. We have a very deliberate process established by the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Ramstein, Germany, that meets regularly to make sure that the Ukrainians are getting what they need, when they need it.”
The Patriot batteries should significantly bolster what is already a robust air defense system n Ukraine.
The New York Times quoted Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Hromov, a deputy chief on the Ukrainian General Staff, as saying that in November Ukrainian air defenses shot down 72 percent of the 239 Russian cruise missiles and 80 percent of the 80 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones launched at targets.
But those missiles and drones that do get through to hit their targets have caused widespread damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure as freezing temperatures set in. A recent drone attack left more than 1.5 million people in the Odesa region without power.
Gen. Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy intelligence chief, told The Times that Russia is using missiles at a faster pace than they can produce them.
“According to our calculations, they have missiles for another three to five waves of attacks,” he said. “This is if there are 80 to 90 rockets in one wave.”
He added that Ukraine believes Russia’s defense industry is currently making around 40 precision-guided and cruise missiles per month. Russia is now looking to obtain more missiles from Iran, which has already supplied hundreds of drones.
Skibitsky said Russia has even resorted to using Kh-55 subsonic cruise missiles with no warheads — salvaged and redesigned to carry ballast — as decoys for Ukrainian air defense interceptors. After the air defenses are engaged, he said, Russian bombers launch more modern missiles, with real warheads.
He added that the Kh-55 missiles used as decoys had been designed in the 1970s to carry a nuclear warhead, and wreckage indicated that some of the missiles had been built in a weapons factory in Ukraine.
It turned out that several of the downed missiles had been part of a cache of weaponry handed over to Russia by Ukraine in the 1990s under an international agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine agreed to give up it nuclear arsenal inherited from the former Soviet Union in return for security guarantees.
“All ballistic missiles, Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers were also handed over,” Skibitsky told The Times. “Now, they are using Kh-55 missiles against us with these bombers. It would be better if we handed them over to the U.S.A.”
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