The Fantasy Of Missile Defense In Ukraine

 moon of alabama

In October 2022 I mocked western media propaganda that was depicting Russia as unable to sustain the war:

Russia, Having 'Run Out Of Missiles', Launches Barrage On Ukraine

Back in March I had warned that Lies Do Not Win Wars. Here is another practical example.

After allegedly having 'run out of missiles' and, more importantly, patience, the leadership of the Russian Federation decided to de-electrify Ukrainian cities with a 'barrage of missile strikes'.

But first came the propaganda blubber: ...

There followed 25 headlines by western media which claimed that Russia was running out of missiles.

More recently we see frequent claims by the Ukrainian government that it shot down 43 of the 32 drones Russia launched that day as well as 5 out of 3 supersonic missiles.

Laughable nonsense.

But slowly, slowly the Ukrainians and media have turned to describing stuff more near to, but not yet, reality:

Russia has fired 7,400 missiles, 3,700 Shahed drones in war so far, Kyiv says - Reuters

Russia has launched about 7,400 missiles and 3,700 Shahed attack drones at targets in Ukraine during its 22-month-old invasion, Kyiv said on Thursday, illustrating the vast scale of Moscow's aerial assaults.

Ukrainian air defences were able to shoot down 1,600 of the missiles and 2,900 of the drones, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said in televised comments. "We are faced with an enormous aggressor, and we are fighting back," he said.

Shooting down drones, which are relatively slow and fly low, is not so difficult or expensive. One often only needs to have some machine guns in place on the path along which a drone is flying.

Shooting down missiles is something entirely different. Due to their flightpath and speed one needs expensive missile defense systems. The anti-missile missiles these systems fire come at a high price. One Patriot missile comes at about $2,000,000, more for newer ones. Routinely two are fired against any potential target.

If the Ukraine has really shot down 1,600 missiles, which I very much doubt, one can easily calculate the enormous costs of such an endeavor

There are reasons why Patriot missiles are only produced in the hundreds per year, not in the thousands.

No country in the world can sustain such an onslaught without running out of defenses or going bankrupt.

Several months ago a U.S. delivered Patriot system in Kiev came under attack. Set to automatic mode it fired (video) 32 missiles for no observable hits on the imaginary targets. Scott Ritter has said that the U.S. Marines are not allowed to use the automatic mode of their Patriot systems because that is known to fail. But the Ukrainians were not trained to fully handle the manual mode.

And now they are telling us that they shot down 1,600 missiles?

How probable is that?

Posted by b on December 22, 2023 at 12:53 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/12/the-fantasy-of-missile-defense-in-ukraine.html