Posted on 12/14/2022 5:00:03 PM PST by dennisw
MOSCOW—The Kremlin said that U.S. Patriot missile-defense systems would be a legitimate target if supplied to Ukraine, signaling that Russia doesn’t intend to cease its military offensive even in the face of superior weaponry.
U.S. officials this week said Washington was finalizing plans to provide Ukraine with the highly advanced weaponry that would significantly boost its air-defense capabilities, following months of Russian missile and drone attacks on the country’s power grid, cities and civilian infrastructure.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that the coveted missile- defense batteries would absolutely be fair game for a strike, but added that he would rather not comment further until there was official information on the matter, as opposed to media reports, which he described as unreliable.
Mr. Peskov was responding to a question on whether he agreed with comments made last month by Russia’s Security Council deputy chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, that the delivery of such systems to Ukraine would “immediately become a legitimate target for Russia’s armed forces.”
If the Biden administration moves forward with a decision, which could come as early as this week, the Patriots would be the most sophisticated system the U.S. has provided Ukraine since Russia invaded its smaller neighbor in February.
Frustrated by battlefield setbacks, Russia has increasingly reverted to targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, primarily using Iranian-made drones. On Wednesday, Ukrainian air defenses repelled a wave of Russian strikes in Kyiv, knocking at least 13 drones out of the sky, with explosions reported in the historical center of the city, according to Ukrainian officials.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
This is Russia’s way of warning, that if we kill/take out a few American trainers and advisors for the Ukraine’s Patriot missile systems, that you cannot blame us.
sounds like an acceptable cost-benefit ratio in MIC DC.
“Soviet soldiers sent to the Vietnam War as anti-aircraft technicians took part in missile-launching combat and shot down United States aircraft, the Soviet Army newspaper reported today.”
(snip)
“Their pride was such in their Vietnam service that they made up small momentoes for themselves from the scrap of the 400th American plane that was downed in the war, the report said.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/14/world/russians-acknowledge-a-combat-role-in-vietnam.html
“What if US forces are operating the Patriot Missiles?”
More like training the Ukrainians. But you have this right. The Russians are warning in advance that some Americans (contractors) might get killed when we try to destroy the Patriot anti-missile systems. So don’t blame us Russians for collateral damage.
Let's go Brandon. He can survive in a fallout shelter and pass on into infamy.
That is precisely my point, with respect to collateral damage.
Or KIAs if in uniform.
We know there are SpecOps, contractors/mercs, and spooks in Ukraine.
Good news. Close off the russians from the Ukrainian skies
May it be so!
Scatter a bunch of fake/decoy Patriot units everywhere, so they will waste a bunch of ordinance trying to destroy them.
There is talk that an inaccurate translation occurred on this story.
The Kremlin did not say legitimate target. It said easy target.
Go look up the Iron Dome wiki and what Israel chose.
FYI, The US can produce only 250 Patriot missiles a YEAR.
Russia can produce 150 cruise missiles a MONTH(1800/year).
Russia has been averaging over 100 cruise missiles fired per MONTH in Ukraine.
For every incoming missile, the Patriot system will fire 2 missiles (sometimes 3).
This does not include drone type attacks.
The Patriot systems will run out of missiles and not be able to be resupplied.
The Patriot systems while mobile, are not shoot and move systems because of the setup and takedown time making them a vulnerable target.
Duh....
So putin knew that America would use Ukraine as a proxy to have a war with russia, and his clever response was to go ahead, take the bait and roll his tanks into Ukraine? In other words, he saw the pile of dogshit but stepped into it anyway?
On a unit cost basis they would be a lot cheaper. They would not need to be fancy - maybe a quad .50 cal mounted on a truck. But there are other considerations. You would need a lot of them to defend an area as the range of effectiveness would be a few kilometers only. So if you want to defend a 10 kilometer wide city you might need 6 dozen or so to just to give two layers of all around defense. Terrain around the objective to be defended is a big consideration as well. If the terrain is fairly flat then you might not need a lot of them but if there are intermittent hills and valleys or a lot of woods you may need a lot more of them to get adequate coverage. Acquisition may be a real problem with relatively small drones, although a centralized detection capability might be able to detect and assign targets to individual low tech flak units like described above.
If we spend $150K per flak unit to arm the trucks with quad 50s and give a simple capability to accept targeting data from an acquisition facility, the cost of defending our notional city is about $10.8M plus the acquisition capability (maybe $25M). Ammunition for the system is dirt cheap.
Now suppose we have a missile based short range (about 15 km) air defense system to defend our city If we place three missile launcher units ($20M each, includes acquisition capability) with 8 missiles each (at $200K per missile) then the setup cost is $64.8M. Ammunition will be somewhat costly if a lot of drones are launched.
Many other factors come into play here but the problem you pose is fairly complex and is filled with educated guesses as to the ‘best’ way to defend an objective against drones.
The Ukes are using inflatable decoys for several systems. They could gin up decoy Patriot launchers pretty quickly.
You people are sick in the head.
Someone must have been desperate for an article to meet their quota.
“... the Luisitania was sunk, and the US media expressed outrage ...”
What if US forces are operating the Patriot Missiles?
How many military conflicts have we engaged without Congress declaring war?
How many off book Black Ops?
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