Three American Patriot Missile Batteries and AN/MPQ-65 Radar Taken Out in Ukraine - Reports

The Russian Armed Forces were reported on August 11 to have successfully struck three surface to air missile batteries and an AN/MPQ-65 radar station in Ukraine. The location of the strikes, and the kinds of assets used to achieve the kills, remain unknown. Unlike a number of prior reported kills against Patriot systems, no footage has emerged in the public sphere confirming them. Patriot missile systems have been prioritised for targeting by Russian forces from mid-2023, after the first systems were delivered in May that year. Systems have been donated by Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, with further deliveries by Spain and the U.S. expected. Their complexity, and the years of required training to operate them, has led analysts to widely conclude that contractors from Western countries are likely to be playing a central role in operating them. The delivery of Patriots to the Eastern European country has been prioqiitsed due to the serious depletion of its Soviet built network of S-300 and BuK air defence systems, which previously represented by far the largest surface to air missile arsenal of any European country. 

Some of the clearest footage of the destruction of Patriot systems was published on March 10, and showed an Iskander-M ballistic missile system the previous day using targeting data from nearby drones to launch precision strikes on the systems and on accompanying S-300s. This occurred near the Sergeevka locality in the disputed Donetsk region. Analysts writing for Forbes observed at the time that as a result “the air over eastern Ukraine may have gotten a lot safer for the Russians,” with destruction of the air defence systems allowing for strikes on Ukrainian forces in the region with near impunity. Further footage of successful Iskander strikes on Patriot systems has been published since. The loss of Patriot systems is particularly sensitive due to the global shortages on the supply of such systems, with the U.S. Army’s own arsenal increasingly thinly stretched - a situation exacerbated by the sudden increase in requirements for them from October 2023 following an escalation of attacks on American military facilities in the Middle East.