The first warning was an incident, a small anomaly detected by radar scanning the skies over Ukraine. Within seconds it became clear that it was a Russian ballistic missile hurtling towards kyiv at several times the speed of sound.
It was shortly before 4 a.m. on December 11 and we did not have time to sound anti-aircraft alarms in the city. As millions of civilians slept, Ukrainian forces fired several U.S.-supplied Patriot missiles as the deadly battle in the skies began.
Missile-on-missile battles like this take place in minutes, said a Ukrainian major, Volodymyr, commander of a Patriot air defense battery, who insisted that only his first name be used because of the sensitivity of the operations. of his unit.
From a mobile control room near kyiv, his team tracked the salvo of incoming Russian missiles as the Patriot’s algorithms calculated their speed, altitude and predicted trajectory. With shuddering booms and flashes of light, its interceptor missiles shot down one Russian missile after another.
“Given that the Patriot is one of the few systems capable of effectively shooting down ballistic missiles, and ballistic missiles cause the most casualties, I believe that the number of lives saved during the war is counted by thousands,” said Major Volodymyr.
That night was a success, but more recent missile strikes have done even more damage as Russia intensifies its assaults, seeking new weapon combinations and new trajectories to evade Ukraine’s defenses. These attacks further underlined Ukraine’s urgent need for air defense.
On December 29, Russia fired more than 120 missiles at towns in Ukraine, killing at least 44 people, including 30 in Kyiv, the capital. On New Year’s Eve, Ukrainian forces said they had shot down 87 of 90 drones targeting targets across the country. And on Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian military, Russia fired at least 99 missiles and 35 drones at kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people and injuring dozens.
In air attacks carried out during this five-day period alone, UN observers recorded 90 civilian deaths, including two children, and 421 civilian injuries. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia had fired more than 500 missiles and drones at targets across the country during that period.
“There is no reason to believe that the enemy will stop here,” said General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief. said on social media after Tuesday’s attack. “Therefore, we need more systems and ammunition for them.”
But White House and Pentagon officials have warned that the United States will soon no longer be able to supply Ukraine’s Patriot batteries with interceptor missiles, which could be costly. 2 million dollars has 4 million dollar coin.
Since the start of the war in February 2022, Russia has led more than 3,800 drones And 7,400 missiles in Ukrainian cities. At the same time, Ukraine has become a testing ground for a range of air defense systems, according to the Ukrainian military.
Their sophistication ranges from truck-mounted Stingers and short-range anti-aircraft guns, such as the German-made Gepards, to complex longer-range systems, such as the French-designed SAMP/T, which can hit a target at 60 miles away. There is also the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, produced jointly by the United States and Norway.
Only Patriots are designed to counter ballistic missiles, and from the moment the first Patriot battery entered the battle space, they have reshaped the battle for the skies.
Major Volodymyr, 32, was piloting a Soviet-era S-300 system when Russia launched its invasion in 2022. Yet while Ukrainian air defense teams managed to prevent Russian fighter jets from taking the domination in the air and to establish an agile defense against cruisers Ship missiles, they had nothing designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.
As Russian strikes devastated critical infrastructure throughout Ukraine, authorities considered evacuating Kyiv in November, and the U.S. Congress approved the first Patriot battery for Ukraine a month later.
Maj. Volodymyr was part of a team sent to Fort Sill, a former frontier cavalry post in southwest Oklahoma, for a 10-week course on how to operate and maintain the system.
“We quickly found a common language with the Americans,” he said in a recent interview. “We are in constant contact with them. If something happens, they worry, write to us, congratulate us.
After two more weeks of training in Poland, he traveled to Ukraine with the first Patriot system. Within days, his team was put to the test in combat.
On May 4, Russian forces fired a hypersonic missile at kyiv. And although President Vladimir V. Putin deemed the weapon “unbeatable,” a Patriot interceptor missile brought it down.
“It was quite unexpected,” said Major Volodymyr. “We had just come from training and we didn’t understand exactly what we had destroyed.”
“Later, when we found out, our confidence in the equipment our partners provided us increased,” he said.
In May and June, in some of the most complex attacks involving drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles, Ukraine’s two Patriot batteries shot down all 34 ballistic missiles that Russia had fired at Kiev, according to report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization based in Washington.
“There were days when the guys barely had time to reload the launchers,” said Major Volodymyr.
Equally important is the role the Patriots played in defending against sophisticated saturation bombing. These assaults use a combination of land, sea and air launch platforms to deliver missiles and drones into Ukraine along varied flight paths, descending along different trajectories with coordinated impact times intended to overwhelm the Ukrainian defenses.
In only one of these recent bombings did Russia send missiles beyond kyiv and then return them to attack.
Russian forces also use decoys and program missiles to change course during flight to confuse air defense crews.
But the Patriot’s powerful radar has a range of more than 93 miles and can track up to 100 targets at a time, according to report by the Congressional Research Service. Its radar also provides missile guidance data for several interceptor missiles, according to the report, and is resistant to electronic jamming.
Over the past year, Ukraine has created “a unified interaction system” that allows air defense teams using different systems to use information collected by Patriot crews and other sophisticated radar networks, a said Lieutenant Colonel Liubov Kynal, representative of Ukraine. central air command wing.
“We all work as one,” she said.
The truck-mounted command center – which calculates interceptor trajectories, controls the launch sequence and allows soldiers to communicate with other air defense units – is the only manned part of the system.
“Of course, we are constantly moving the system, constantly changing locations so that the enemy does not know where we are,” said Major Volodymyr.
Other major elements of the battery, including power plants, missile launchers and radar arrays, are mobile and moved frequently to avoid detection.
“We are constantly changing equipment and are ready to work immediately,” the major said.
While a Patriot battery requires a minimum of 70 trained soldiers to operate and maintain, only two or three soldiers are needed in the control post to operate it in combat.
“When the alarm sounds, the entire combat team arrives,” said Major Volodymyr. They can assemble in less than five minutes, he said.
Still, the protection the Patriots offer is limited, like a blanket that only covers a fraction of a bed. “We were able to defend kyiv, but at the same time Odessa was being destroyed,” said Major Volodymyr.
Ukrainian commanders are now trying to plan their future without knowing what weapons they have.
“We managed to create a shield over the state thanks to our foreign partners,” said Major Volodymyr. “But if our foreign partners turn their backs on us, we will return to the beginning of the war, when people simply did not come out of their shelters and the Russians tried to turn our cities into complete ruins.”
