Eurasia Press & News
It is now “harder” for Ukraine’s Patriot air defenses to intercept incoming Russian ballistic missiles, a Ukrainian military spokesperson has said.
“It is more difficult to counter missiles flying on a quasi-ballistic trajectory,” Yuriy Ignat, a spokesperson for Kyiv’s air force, told the country’s national rolling news on Sunday. A quasi-ballistic trajectory means the missile starts off traveling like a ballistic missile but can then switch up later in the flight.
“This makes the work of the Patriot system more complicated because it operates in automatic mode when engaging ballistic missiles,” Ignat said in remarks reported by Ukrainian media. “It becomes harder to calculate the point at which the interceptor collides with or explodes near the incoming missile.”
Why It Matters
Russia has hammered Ukraine with aerial attacks, including using hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles. Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday Russia had fired close to 500 drones, more than 50 cruise missiles and two Kinzhal ballistic missiles at the country from late on Saturday. Air defenses intercepted one of the ballistic missiles, the air force said.
The U.S.-made Patriot, typically deemed the gold standard of ballistic missile defense, has consistently featured at the very top of Kyiv’s wish list of military support from its allies. But Patriot batteries—and the interceptor missiles they use—are in scarce supply and very high demand.
The Patriot is credited with intercepting next-generation Russian weapons debuted in the more than three-and-a-half years of full-scale war in Ukraine, like hypersonic missiles.
What To Know
Russia has improved its ballistic missiles to evade Patriot systems, including when Moscow damaged at least four drone facilities around the capital in recent months, British newspaper the Financial Times (FT) reported last week, citing unnamed current and former Ukrainian and Western officials.
The ballistic missiles fired by Russia now reportedly start off with previously-seen trajectories, but then either move to “confuse and avoid” interceptor missiles fired by Patriots, or drop into what is known as a terminal dive, or the final phase of a missile coming down.
While defenses can be improved by exposure to how an enemy’s missiles perform in real combat conditions, the same scenario gives opportunities to test and improve the attacking missiles and probe weaknesses in layered air defenses.
The Patriot is currently the only real option Ukraine has to intercept ballistic missiles, although it has other systems to knock out cruise missiles and to take down drones.
Ukraine has “struggled to consistently use Patriot air defense systems to protect against Russian ballistic missiles due to recent Russian tactical improvements, including enhancements that enable their missiles to change trajectory and perform
maneuvers rather than flying in a traditional ballistic trajectory,” an assessment published by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s special inspector general in mid-August concluded. The analysis covered from April 1 to June 30 of this year.
Russia has likely tweaked its Iskander-M and Kinzhal missiles, the FT reported. The air-launched nuclear-capable Kinzhal, or “Dagger,” is thought to be based on the ground-launched, short-range Iskander-M.
What People Are Saying
Ukrainian air force spokesperson, Yuriy Ignat, told Ukrainian television: “When ballistic missiles can approach from different directions, a single system cannot detect all of them—you need several systems, multiple radars, to cover a city from various angles.”
