“How the Patriot Missile Became a Hero to Ukraine War” ran a June 11 headline in the Wall Street Journal. When the Journal flacks a weapon system deemed long ago in classified U.S. diplomatic traffic as a “negligible military asset,” you have to know something fishy is going on. The story extolled the wondrous performance of the weapon in downing no less than six Russian KH-47 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles early in the morning of May16. Such at least was the claim by Ukrainian defense officers provided to, and unhesitatingly accepted by, Journal reporters. “No one was 100% sure that the Patriot was capable of destroying a Kh-47 hypersonic missile,” one Ukrainian military commander was reported as saying. “Ukrainians proved it.”
Maybe.
The Russians insist they destroyed a Patriot battery, a target of their attack, and highlighted video of an explosion on the ground that could indeed have been part of a battery. While the Ukrainians denied suffering any damage, the Pentagon finally conceded that the strike had inflicted “minor damage.” to a Patriot radar. Video of the attack shows Patriot missiles blazing off like fireworks, as many as thirty in just two minutes, depending on whose cropped video you prefer to believe, At $4.1 million a pop, that comes to $123 million, up in smoke in less time than it takes to read this article, which is fast going even by the standards of Ukraine war spending.
All this came as good news to the most relevant parties, i.e. the management of Raytheon, responsible for the billion dollar (each) system that detects and tracks the targets, and Lockheed, which makes the PAC-3 interceptor missiles. “We have been very surprised at its effectiveness,” Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes purred to the Journal. (He may have been referring to the system’s effectiveness in generating revenue. As his predecessor Bill Swanson used to tell senior executives: “I get up every morning and the first thing I think about are shareholders.”)
Inside, they know better, at least according to one Raytheon executive who, when asked by a friend of mine if the Ukrainians really had downed a single Kinzhal, replied caustically: “How may Rs are there in ‘fat chance?’”
The insider’s report should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Patriot history. Spawned out of 1960s technology, Patriot came to public attention in the 1991 Gulf War. Despatched to Saudi Arabia and Israel, it proved a resounding failure against Saddam Hussein’s Scud attacks. A Patriot battery at the principal U.S. base at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, failed to detect an incoming Scud that hit a barracks and killed 28 G.I.s. Patriots launched against Scuds over Tel Aviv zoomed across the skyline and impacted on the city they were supposed to be defending.
Eighteen years later, matters had not improved. In February, 2009, U.S. Ambassador to Warsaw Victor Ashe reported to Washington on a scheme to station a token U.S.-manned Patriot force in Poland. “Although a negligible military asset next to Russian capabilities,” he wrote in a classified cable, “the Patriot rotation puts U.S. boots on Polish soil, something all Poles think will inherently improve their security situation.” (H/t Mike Krupa)
The Saudis found out about the “negligible” bit the hard way, when Scuds and drones launched by the Yemeni Houthis, or Iranians masquerading as same, crashed into Saudi targets unmolested by the extensive network of Patriot batteries foisted on them by the Raytheon sales team. (The pitch was probably rendered easier because the Saudis had delegated procurement negotiations to another U.S. contractor, the Boston Consulting Group.)
The Ukrainians are now discovering Patriot realities for themselves. As presumably are the Russians, who would certainly have taken note, as I previously reported, of chance discovery by an Israeli researcher that the Patriot’s phased array radars can show up nicely on synthetic aperture radar imagery from the European Space Agency’s open-access SENTINEL-1 satellite, dedicated to monitoring ground conditions, such as soil moisture for economic research.
But the Ukrainians know better than to complain (though demanding more is quite ok.). They know where duty lies. As Andrij Yermak, chief of staff to President Zelensky, told the Journal., “We are the best promoter of the Patriot.” If Yermak or any other senior official said anything negative about the system, or any other item in their western-supplied arsenal, they’d soon be in hot water. Anyway, why should they complain? That $123 million came from us.
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