The US military is considering training Ukrainian forces how to use Patriot missile defense systems at a base in the United States, POLITICO reported Thursday, citing two unnamed Pentagon officials.
One Patriot air defense battery and munitions for the system were included in the $1.85 billion weapons package the US announced for Ukraine on Wednesday. It marks an escalation in US military aid as the Raytheon-made Patriots are considered to be the most advanced air defense systems in the US arsenal.
According to military experts, it should take about six months to train Ukrainians how to use the system, a timeline that would put the system on the battlefield by early summer if training began soon. Operating one Patriot battery requires about 90 troops, demonstrating how advanced the system is.
The Pentagon has been training Ukrainians on how to use other US-provided weapons in Germany and elsewhere in Europe but hasn’t had a similar program inside the US since Russia invaded in February. If the training is done in the US, it would likely be at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where officials told POLITICO most of the trainers and simulators are located.
The report said that the Pentagon is considering whether to do all the training in the US or to complete other portions of it in a third country. An official said that the US wouldn’t give Ukraine the battery until its forces know how to use it, and it would likely be a system that the US military has in storage rather than one that’s deployed.
Raytheon, now HQ’d in Virginia, in hollering distance of DC. Where its former board member Lloyd
Austin is the secretary of defense. VA is now the nexus of the US defense industry. The US is very rapidly revving up a WWII-style defense industry to replace its devastated manufacturing capability. Obviously very dangerous, etc. But how many in US really are aware of this conversion of plowshares into swords?
No one who matters or has any say in national policy has the power to stop or shrink the MIC or keep them from their chosen course of destroying their lifelong enemy Russia. Russia has the capability as does the US to end life on our planet.The Capitalists in the US are not listening or caring. All they know is profits and do not care who or how many die..This is truly a frightening and insane policy.
When U.S. is so paranoid that they can’t risk training them in Poland or Germany.
Why would US not used it best training facilities which is in the US?
You suggest US bases in Germany and Poland are inferior?
Inferior is a relative term, is it not? So yes, as training bases they are inferior to what the US Army has in the states. Just like us Army Stuttgart Germany headquarters is inferior to the Pentagon.
Or, perhaps, the requirement for 90 troops demonstrates that the system is overly complex, high-maintenance, and not a great choice for an under-trained army in a conventional land war on the steppes of eastern Europe.
The actual battery crew per launcher is three people. There are six launchers to a battery, so 18.
Of course, there’s a lot of “tail” to “tooth” involved — a fire control center, HQ/maintenance, etc.
But by way of comparison, a standard 81mm mortar crew consists of a squad leader, a gunner, an assistant gunner, and two ammo guys. I’ve run an ACTUAL squad of two people before (myself as squad leader and gunner, one other guy a-gunning and handling ammo), and often we were at least one ammo guy light, but standard size is five, with eight guns to the battery, so 40 plus the “tail” (fire direction, comm, platoon command, etc.).
Deploying a single Patriot battery might might involve some of the “tail” multi-tasking. I don’t know if a regular Fire Support Coordination Center can handle that system above and beyond artillery, air support, etc., but if so that’s fewer people dedicated entirely to the Patriot battery. Ditto as to whether air defense radars that trigger other systems can handle the Patriot too.
And one hyper sonic missile will take it out and everyone near it .
It would take more than one hyper sonic missile to take entire battery out.
how do you know?
Simple, the system will be deployed in a method where the HE frag warhead of the sonic missile can take out only one piece of equipment.
How about one hypersonic missile, five transonic cruise missiles and a dozen drones, all launched at once? Or however many of each you think necessary.
If an opponent with Russia’s capabilities, on its own doorstep, decides it really wants to destroy a weapons system, locatable by existing surveillance and dependent on radar, that weapons system is very likely to be destroyed. Fairly obviously.
An attack like that is a difference story than one missile. I was pointing out that it will take more than one missile to destroy a patriot battery. Do you disagree?
It doesn’t matter whether I agree or disagree and, anyway, I happen not to know how likely it is that a single Russian missile would take out the Patriot battery. Neither do you, of course.
The point is that Russian forces have numerous ways of targeting this or any other weapons system and lots of chances for each possible way to work. For that reason, it’s most likely that, if Russia wants to destroy an enormously-expensive Patriot battery, it will indeed be destroyed.
The few times I saw Patriots in deployment, the launchers seemed to be widely dispersed. I’d see a single launcher, then maybe another one several hundred meters away. The only way for a single missile (that wasn’t e.g. a nuke) to take an entire battery out of action would probably be to target its higher HQ/fire direction echelon, and even that might not be enough if the radars are also dispersed and networked for direct launcher contact.
The bigger question on the Patriot is not how hard it is to take out, but how good (or not good) it is at taking out targets that it was not initially designed to contend with (hypersonic missiles, drones, etc.). It may be relatively useless, or perhaps upgrades have helped it keep up with the Joneses.
As I said, I don’t know whether a single hit could take out a battery. As you suggest, it would depend on whether a hitting single control element would be sufficient.
I think both its efficacy and its vulnerability matter a lot. If it’s not too difficult to take it out, it won’t matter all that much how good it is at engaging more recently-developed targets. Maybe we’ll see.
From Wiki:
I just skimmed the entry, but it appears that taking out the control station cripples the battery.
Check out D-PICC.
“Neither do you”. Actually I do. And it is not because I read wiki articles.
🙄
Yes, I’m sure they’ll cut personnel, and training, as much as they think they can. I don’t know what the civilian decision makers, other than the ones with solid military knowledge, believe, but I’m pretty sure that no one with adequate knowledge thinks a Patriot battery, or multiple Patriot batteries, can significantly affect the outcome on the battlefield. Well, at least not in a way that would be beneficial to Kiev’s forces.
During the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Patriots downed at least three friendly warplanes in incidents I remember and at least one USAF pilot deliberately took out a Patriot battery, because the flyers saw the apparently trigger-happy missileers as a deadly threat and the guy got a little grumpy when the Patriot radar lit him up. Imagine what the Ukrainians will do.
A Patriot battery in Ukraine will instantly become a prime target for Russian forces, which will have no trouble locating it and are capable of concerted attacks that almost certainly couldn’t be successfully defended against, at least not for long. And I would guess they would go to some lengths trying to get video of the battery being destroyed. Terrible PR problem for US-NATO.
It really seems like a bad idea.
“A Patriot battery in Ukraine will instantly become a prime target for Russian forces, which will”
likely reveal significant information concerning Russian detection and targeting capabilities.
You didn’t think the US/EU/NATO got involved in this solely out of concern for Ukraine, did you? They’re gathering huge data sets as to what the Russian forces are and are not capable of doing, how well or badly they do it, etc.
Prep for the “big one”? Perfect. Where do we enter into the calculus? Do we have a choice as to what our brainiacs in D.C. and the Pentagon do?
The political class would happily throw you and me into a volcano if it expected dollars and power as a reward.
Ahh that makes sense. Intelligence gathering. Wherever it is located gets blown to bits in exchange for crucial information about Russia’s military capability.
Yes, but it won’t be new news if it turns out that an opponent capable of simultaneously launching as many precision guided weapons, of various kinds as it wishes, from widely-scattered launch sites, is able to take out a single air defense battery.
We may get a random place in Ukraine bombed to bits just to learn that 10 drones for half a million bucks CAN take down a multi-billion dollar Patriot.
Well, that is not all “we” (by which I assume you mean the US regime and the contractors who build the Patriot) would learn. They would presumably learn a lot about how those drones did it and how those drones might be detected earlier and possibly counteracted.
The war in Ukraine is revealing a lot what’s new and may work, versus what’s old and no longer works, in conventional warfare. That’s probably not the ONLY reason the US is so interested in seeing its weapons used there, but it’s one of them.
If the Patriot battery is defensible and effective, that will be used as justification for the US regime to order more of them, and for other regimes to get in line to buy them as well.
If the Patriot Battery is indefensible or in effective, that will be used as justification for spending a crap ton of money developing something new that replaces it.
Either way, the MIC wins.
I’m certain that US-NATO got “involved” in supplying vast quantities of weapons in the months since the invasion began because it realized at some point that it’s necessary to do that to prevent its puppet from being promptly and thoroughly crushed.
Each side, of course, is taking advantage of the fighting to assess the capabilities and competencies of the other.
Cool, and all they have to do to get that dossier filled in is get maybe 30-40 thousand Ukrainians killed and twice that number or more wounded.
Brilliant.
If so, why is Russia complaining about just a single battery?
I sometimes have difficulty determining whether posts like this one from you are serious, Kenneth. Is it really possible that you could ask that question with sincerity?
Russia isn’t “complaining,” Russia is warning. Russia is reminding the US and the rest of the world that providing Kiev with more advanced and longer-range weapons is provocative and escalatory and increases the risk of direct confrontation between the world’s largest nuclear powers.
Well Red, I don’t have any difficulty in determining your support and loyalty to Russia. You downplay the Patriot missile system, but at same time Russia warns that the Patriot missile system is an escalation. Your Russian friends don’t agree with your assessment.
I really shouldn’t keep trying, Kenneth, but it’s possible that we have readers here who share your confusion, so here we go:
The fact that the Patriot is a more-advanced long-range system than the US has previously provided to Ukraine means that providing it is in fact an escalation, regardless of what I or anyone else, including Russian leaders, may think about its likely impact or lack thereof.
Various posters have tried repeatedly to explain to you that recognizing that Russia has been relentlessly provoked; that the Kiev regime is a wholly-dependent puppet serving the US goal of weakening Russia; that Ukrainian forces are are being sacrificed in a war of attrition that cannot be won . . . recognizing those things doesn’t make anyone a Russian supporter. Nor does recognizing that Russia is reacting in much the same way that great powers typically do react, and that US provocation despite knowing that makes the US largely responsible for the consequences of its provocative behavior, mean that one is a Russian supporter.
All of the above said, however, the notion that the fact of being a supporter of Russia would somehow invalidate a person’s views, understanding, knowledge, assessments, etc. is just childish and brain-dead stupid. This isn’t a sporting contest where the opinions of the fans of one team are automatically dismissed by an opponent’s fans.
If the US follows through on its threat to arm Ukraine to the teeth with more missiles that threaten the existence of Russia they will force Putin to respond in a way that won’t be good for humanity. Surely the US is not that crazy or are they?
I`m afraid they are that crazy , 33 countries invaded since 1953 millions of civilians dead , failed states , dictatorships ect ect are the results , with the US getting rich from it.
Yep. Karma’s a bitch.
” threaten the existence of Russia” How is it possible that little Ukraine could threaten the existence of
Russia?
Oh, come on. You know what the reality is. Ukraine is a convenient launching pad for our war against Russia. Far away from our shores. Next door to Russia. Friendly NAZIs. Other countries brought into NATO that are close to Russia’s borders. It is a threat to Russia and you know it. Do not be coy.
One problem with you statement. Putin started the war. Are you proposing that Putin is so stupid that he started a war in Ukraine that US wanted him to start? He would have to be very dumb to fall into that trap.
Turkish FM says some NATO states want Ukrainian war to continue
Some NATO member countries want the Russia-Ukraine war to prolong so Russia gets weaker, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on April 20, stressing that rival states must not see Ukraine as an arena of competition.
“After the talks in Istanbul, we did not think that the war would take this long. There are those who want this war to continue,” the minister told broadcaster CNN Türk.
“But, following the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, it was the impression that… there are those within the NATO member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine,” he added.
Çavuşoğlu stressed that Ukraine must not be seen as an arena of competition.
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/nato-allies-want-longer-ukraine-war-to-weaken-moscow-turkey-173158
After recently bragging about the recent attacks on a Russian air base that hosts their nuclear armed missiles, you post THIS???
Ukraine is a threat to the entire world. With US aid and especially surveillance, Ukraine has a proven threat to bomb Moscow even, as many Americans proudly pointed out.
OMG. One little attack on an airbase and Russia will cease to exists. OK.
Maybe they’ll train them ten feet in front of the Pentagon.
They should have an ice cream truck on standby. Frozen cherry popsicles is their favorite.
We are messing with fire…
Both wings of the Lemmings Partei are marching in unison to the cliff, so full of themselves and their partisan BS that the prospect of annihilation is just a faint shudder at the apex of their collective bowel.
Civilization will drown in their diarrhea.
Well said OB.
Thanks. Have a happy, healthy holiday, DV!
You too OB. I hope that we all do…
++++
Check out Brian Berletic on the New Atlas to find how useful one Patriot gift some time or other will actually be to help you and Zelinskyy.
So, using the Israeli attacks on Iranian forces in Syria as precedent, Russia would be perfectly justified in attacking those training bases, right? No argument from anyone, right?
I think bringing Ukrainian troops to train on US bases would remove any doubt (if there was any) about the US being a co-belligerent.
Russia’s probably not reckless enough to do it (and hitting Lawton, Oklahoma would probably mean using an ICBM), so it isn’t likely to happen. But it would almost certainly be legitimate as far as the laws of war go.
It’s not like there really WAS any doubt about the US being a co-belligerent.
On the other hand, Russia still seems to regard itself as a “great power,” and it’s not like “proxy war” is some kind of new thing between “great powers.” The US did not attack the Soviet Union during the US war in Vietnam, even as the Soviet Union trained North Vietnamese pilots, air crew, and anti-aircraft crews, and even sent Soviet troops to North Vietnam to “advise,” conduct training, and probably actually operate SAM batteries.
If you had 6,000 nukes and the reduction of your contributions to the energy markets could wreak havoc on the European economy, you’d be a great power also.
Yes, the Soviets provided significant assistance to North Vietnam, but it was minuscule in comparison to US involvement in Ukraine today.
Obviously, Russia isn’t going to attack Fort Sill, but maybe it could supply weapons and training to the Apaches to help secure “justice for Geronimo.” 😈
The point is that there seems to be a “great power” modus vivendi regarding “proxy wars.” They’ll bellyache about each other supporting opponents as “proxies,” but they generally won’t escalate to attacking each other directly.
That’s true. And this one is different. Very different from the usual proxy war.
This proxy war is being fought directly against a great power itself, on its border and in territory it claims as its own.
China jumped into Korea in a big way and the US hadn’t even publicly announced its intention of using hostile action to weaken that country (although the Americans, freaking out over “losing” China, would have loved for things to have played out that way).
I think it’s pretty clear that the current mess is much riskier than run-of-the-mill proxy wars.
“I think it’s pretty clear that the current mess is much riskier than run-of-the-mill proxy wars.”
So far as I can tell, it’s not nearly as risky as most. The only way I can find to conclude that it is is to assume that Putin and his inner circle are either stupid or insane. And I don’t assume that.
I think you’re dead wrong on this one and I don’t know any well-informed and relatively nonpartisan analysts who agree with you.
The Russian leadership isn’t a bit stupid or insane. They’re smart, experienced and deliberate in their actions, and they don’t want WWIII. They make mistakes, but they learn from them, they adjust and they iterate. Rabid Americans and other brainwashed Westerners can’t let themselves see or believe this, because enemies always have to be evil, stupid and incompetent to fit the accepted narrative.
US leadership, on the other hand, is characterized by recklessness, unjustified overconfidence, embarrassingly- and alarmingly-poor judgment and an obvious inability to learn from previous disasters. It’s necessary, of course, to remember that reality doesn’t look this way to the US Power Establishment. All their monumental screwups are victories to them, because the profits keep flowing and they are never held to account. They are remorseless and relentless. To wit:
Victoria Nuland may very well respond similarly to an interviewer’s questions in a few years, even if reasoned analysis makes it clear that provoking and supporting the Nazi-fronted coup led to disaster.
Until Afghanistan, I too thought of the US foreign policy establishment as reckless, overconfident, and afflicted with poor judgment and an obvious inability to learn from previous disasters.
After the first decade or so of Afghanistan, I realized that it’s actually about priorities.
The priority of the US foreign policy establishment is to keep “defense” contractors at full employment with never-ending orders for arms, ammo, etc.
That’s mostly been the case since the end of World War 2, and entirely the case since the 1991 Gulf War.
Yup.
“It’s necessary, of course, to remember that reality doesn’t look this way to the US Power Establishment.”
The Fossil Fuel Gangs, especially the “families” that are deeply committed to fracked horizontal wells in shale to produce natural gas, are also doing quite nicely in this case. And they need an artificially-leveraged market like this, because those wells deplete so rapidly that the only way to keep up payments to the funders is to drill more as fast as possible.
Klein’s The Shock Doctrine was really remarkably insightful. I think her brand of activism is mostly useless (as is most activism targeting the System that is Eating the Planet), but her analysis is sometimes impressive.
Red; I LIKE IT! 😁
“According to military experts, it should take about six months to train Ukrainians how to use the system, a timeline that would put the system on the battlefield by early summer if training began soon. Operating one Patriot battery requires about 90 troops, demonstrating how advanced the system is.”
Considering the significant VSU losses Ukraine is sustaining; the Patriot’s extended training period; the fact that the US may have at least 1,000 troops and “mercenaries” in theater; why wouldn’t Washington immediately send a US-staffed battery or two there?
The US knows that it’s extremely likely that sending American crews to operate a Patriot battery would get those crews taken out along with the battery.
American girls and boys coming home as piles of parts in boxes always gets Americans’ attention. Some, the most moronic of the morons, would insist on sending more troops and bombing Moscow, but the vast majority who have been slapping little Ukrainian flags on their social media posts don’t actually want to start WWIII.
Also, of course, if US crews were operating the systems, it wouldn’t be possible to blame failures on incompetent Ukrainians.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-ready-negotiate-end-ukraine-war-west-wants-tear-apart-russia
Putin “Ready” To Negotiate End To Ukraine War, But West Wants To “Tear Apart” Russia
I’d be tempted to say that you couldn’t make this shit up, but we could all make it up, because we’ve experienced US provocative stupidity our whole lives.
Thomas Knapp pointed out that one of the big points of deploying the unit is to see how Russia blows it up, learns how to deal with the countermeasures, and uses the Russian tactics against them in future encounters
According to Russian sources, this has already started to happen. According to Russian sources, the US sent 7 drones to attack something in the Crimea.
BIG RUSSIAN VICTORY ALL THE DRONES WERE SHOT DOWN. And the conclusion was: the missiles sent to destroy the drones cost 10x or possibly 100x what the drones cost
It sounds like we are doing cost-benefit work. For our systems, and for theirs, how many drones will it take to destroy the systems, and what are the costs to both sides.
It is likely that both the US and Russia are studying in detail every minute piece of information from these attacks. It sounds like both sides are gearing up for drone wars. The side that produces the bestest fastest most destructive drones wins.
Of course, if all of the drones land in either Ukraine or Russia, we win either way.
Well, PAC-3 missiles for the Patriot system go for $2.5 to $3 million each. Very few of the drones Russia has been using cost more than $50K max.
A while ago, RAND did a study that indicated that the three Patriot system missiles necessary to confidently target an average medium-range ballistic missile cost at least nine times the price of the target.
Sounds about right. And it seems that we are running tests to see what the cost difference is for the Russian series S air defense systems.
On a practical note, future wars where the winner is the nation to produce cheap drones does not sound so good to me.
Kind of a related story. A while back the Israelis and Palestineans had a battle. A bunch of rockets were fired into Israel by the Palestineans.
7% got through and hit anything, mostly harmless.
Cost of the rockets – tens of thousands of dollars???
After the attack ended, Israel requested a couple of billion to replenish their Iron Dome munitions.
Not sure how much of that was munition replacement, but it is clear that Israel spent a LOT more than the Palestinians for this.
A “battle”?
Don’t you mean a “ slaughter “?
Kind of a related story. A while back the Israelis and Palestineans had a battle. A bunch of rockets were fired into Israel by the Palestineans.
7% got through and hit anything, mostly harmless.
Cost of the rockets – tens of thousands of dollars???
After the attack ended, Israel requested a couple of billion to replenish their Iron Dome munitions.
Not sure how much of that was munition replacement, but it is clear that Israel spent a LOT more than the Palestinians for this.
Before any Ukrainian units can be trained in the use of advanced systems Ukraine will cease to exist as a country.
It already did in 2014. Ukraine and pretty much all left Europe is occupied territory.
Украина – оккупированная территория и через несколько месяцев ее не будет
Ukraine will remain. The occupational regime and all terrorist filth will be gone.
In fact, I believe that Kiev will become the foundation and the capital of entire European continent. Free from Anglo-American occupation.
If this comes to pass, I do hope that there will be massive demonstrations outside Fort Sill to protest this idiocy.
ByeDone (whom I’m convinced is actually a cadaver) and the Blinkin’ Idiot, among others, are inching us ever closer towards nuclear annihilation. Good riddance to those of us who support this bullsh*t .
And too bad for the rest of us.