When you have MANY S-300 and other systems with overlapping defense radii, you have a ginormous force-multiplier effect.
When you have ONE Patriot battery, and it’s location is known, [observed by Russian AWACS over Belarus minute by minute] it will be hit with salvos of missiles.
Question: How many missiles does the promised Patriot package contain?
Other problem: the Patriot battery, tracked and followed in transit across Poland and into Ukraine, might be taken out before it is fully operational.
This is not 1990, with six months to safely deploy massive complimentary assets to Saudi Arabia before the first shot is fired.
The S300 is an area air defense weapon. Ukraine has a whole integrated system built around @100 S300 batteries and associated radars, command systems, etc. The biggest problem with that, right now, is limited S300 ammo remaining.
The Patriot, in this case, is being used as a point defense system (granted, a largish “point”), to take over a certain area from the S300’s, as Patriot missiles are available while S300’s arent. Thats what all the western missile systems are there for. Its not likely to be well integrated to the overall air defense system, but needs must.
I doubt very much that the Russians are able to track moving convoys inside Ukraine with actionable real time position info and the reaction time to shoot missiles from hundreds of kilometers away. They havent managed it so far. If they had jets overhead on interdiction, with, say, FLIR pods, where they could find moving convoys in real time, and of course the aircraft right there to engage said convoys on sight, then they could, but the Russians cant do that. They would lose those jets to SAMs, which has been the RuAF problem all along.
The S300 is an area air defense weapon. Ukraine has a whole integrated system built around @100 S300 batteries and associated radars, command systems, etc. The biggest problem with that, right now, is limited S300 ammo remaining.
The Patriot, in this case, is being used as a point defense system (granted, a largish “point”), to take over a certain area from the S300’s, as Patriot missiles are available while S300’s arent. Thats what all the western missile systems are there for. Its not likely to be well integrated to the overall air defense system, but needs must.
I doubt very much that the Russians are able to track moving convoys inside Ukraine with actionable real time position info and the reaction time to shoot missiles from hundreds of kilometers away. They havent managed it so far. If they had jets overhead on interdiction, with, say, FLIR pods, where they could find moving convoys in real time, and of course the aircraft right there to engage said convoys on sight, then they could, but the Russians cant do that. They would lose those jets to SAMs, which has been the RuAF problem all along.