Posted on 12/25/2022 2:50:50 AM PST by RandFan
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday he was “100 percent” confident that his forces would destroy the Pentagon’s most advanced air defence system that US President Joe Biden has promised to send to Ukraine.
“Of course we will destroy it, 100 percent!” Putin said, referring to the Patriot missile battery in extracts of an interview aired on Russian television.
(Excerpt) Read more at insiderpaper.com ...
We are so close to disaster. This is what we should be praying about right now. Everything else pales in comparison.
They may be able to do that. They cannot defeat the missile system in action but, they can, if they discover their whereabouts, destroy the launch systems.
Possibly. But the Ukrainians have been very good about moving all their systems about. That’s why they still have them.
I don’t see that this escalates anything. It’s a strictly defensive weapon.
This will have the same effect on Patriots as it did on HIMARS - Putin will claim and trolls will acclaim that hundreds have been taken out.
I am thinking that the Democrats are selling all of these weapons to Russia. They’re the only one with any real money, right now.
“Of course, we will destroy it, 100 percent!”
And if we don’t know exactly how, we thank the American President for providing the opportunity to learn its weaknesses and how to destroy them.
Hypersonic missiles can defeat the system. We are sending only one Patriot battery.
Watch it show up in Nigeria instead.
Yea and he was 100% sure he could subdue Ukraine and make it a vassal state in 2 weeks. Instead we are 11 months into the war.
He had 27% of Ukraine in March. Today he controls only 15%
The Russians used hypersonic missiles once or twice in March. Nothing since then, have they run out of prototypes?
We’re going to slow-walk the Patriot delivery, really drag it out.
Aside from triggering a missile exchange that takes out the American crew in Ukraine, (there is not time to train a Ukrainian crew), the big worry at the Pentagon is that the Patriot, designed 40 years ago, will be shown to be obsolete and ineffective against Russian hyper-velocity missiles.
If the Patriot battery is taken out, the soap bubble of American technical superiority will pop all around the world.
During Desert Storm, multiple Patriots would be fired at single incoming SCUDs, old inertially guided ballistic missiles, and some still got past them.
Even with software improvements, it’s still a Patriot missile with a very limited engagement range.
One Scud vs multiple Patriots was not a sure stop.
A salvo of time-on-target Russian missiles from slow low drones to hypersonics is going to be very tough for the single Patriot battery, including an American crew, which cannot be camouflaged or concealed.
I predict it’s going to take a VERY long time to get that battery to Ukraine. As it is, we’re going around the world begging for Patriot missiles from old clients just to provide them to Ukraine. We don’t have enough in stockpiles.
That was a demonstration of capability, destroying the “safe” rear-area intake, barracks and training ground near Lviv, and killing up to 100s of foreign volunteers.
It was intended to let NATO know what was in the Russian quiver, and it succeeded.
A Patriot battery cannot be concealed or camouflaged. It’s right out in the open, a statement of missile defense superiority daring enemies to test it.
Soon, it may be tested, and not by single ancient SCUDs vs multiple Patriot missiles, as in Desert Storm.
I seem to remember it being proven that it wasn’t even a hypersonic missile—the video was faked by the Russians, and never saw any confirmation for Russian claims that they had killed “100s of foreign volunteers.”
Hypersonic or not, all long range missiles need targeting information. They are only good for fixed targets at known, pre-programmed locations, at least for ground targets. Targets at sea, ships, can be tracked by radar.
Which is why mobile ground equipment is tough to hit that way. Just moving a kilometer or so a few times a day should be enough put targeting data perpetually off.
If any of that were true, HIMARS systems would not exist in Ukraine. Russia has claimed to have destroyed most or all of them, but in fact I am not sure if even one HIMAR has been struck.
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