A US made Patriot missile battery was reportedly damaged or destroyed during an attack on Kiev in Ukraine. Business Insider. Ukraine received three of the launchers from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands just this April. However, the Ukrainians may have already lost the US provided battery in a massive missile raid on Monday night. The Ukrainians claimed to have shot down 18 missiles in the raid, including six of the new Kinzhal hypersonic missiles along with more conventional Kalibr and ground based missiles. Russia claims that Patriot battery was destroyed in the raid by one of the Kinzhal missiles, while the Pentagon says the battery may have been damaged and it is unclear to what extent.
My Comment:
I do think it was pretty funny that all the NAFO accounts on Twitter were mindlessly parroting the idea that the Ukrainians somehow shot down 18 missiles, including six of the new Kinzhal missiles. I thought that it was ridiculous as soon as I heard it given the low stockpiles of anti-air missiles Ukraine has left and the ineffectiveness of the Patriots against hypersonic missiles.
Those folks have some egg on their face as even pro-Ukraine outlets like Business Insider and CNN are confirming that the battery was at least damaged. I wouldn't be surprised if it was destroyed completely and I am wondering if the crews operating the missiles managed to survive.
Not that I take Russian claims at face value either. Neither side of this war has the monopoly on the truth. But I would also say that there is such a thing as a golden mean fallacy so it's not always a good idea to put your prediction in the middle of both claims. Regardless, I tend to give less weight to Ukrainian forces given how blatantly they have lied in the past. Remember the Ghost of Kiev that supposedly shot down the entire Russian Air Force? Because I haven't forgotten that propaganda.
I think it was pretty clear that entire purpose of the raid was to destroy this battery, or at least take it out of action, and that appears to have succeeded. My guess is that the Russians volley fired their Kalibr and ground based missiles at the area just so the Patriots would launch and they could find the position of the battery, since the Patriots are known to be mobile. Once they had fixed the position and depleted the battery's missiles they sent in the Kinzhals. I am sure that was the strategy even if there is some doubt if it was 100% effective.
This was a fairly big blow to Ukraine's defenses and even if the claims about them shooting down most of this raid were true, it's not likely to be there in the next raid. And given that Ukraine is rapidly running out of most anti-air weapons it might be the beginning of Russian air dominance. The Russia-Ukraine war has been fairly unique in the fact that neither side was able to gain full air dominance due to the very good anti-air capabilities of both sides. But Ukraine's capabilities are being degraded and three Patriot batteries, now reduced to two, wasn't going to change that in the first place.
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