U.S. PATRIOT Missile System Fires 30+ Missiles over Kiev But Gets TAKEN OUT by Russian Hit
30 US Patriot PAC-3 MSE launch at a cost of $5 million per missile. That’s $150 million gone within 2 mins. At the end the Patriot launch platforms were destroyed by Russian missiles. Why would any military still want to buy Patriot after this failure? pic.twitter.com/JiNr06y0Rt
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 16, 2023
Russia Says It Took Out US-Supplied Patriot Missile In Hypersonic Strike On Kiev
Russia’s military may have taken out a US-supplied Patriot anti-air battery in Ukraine, which if true would be a very significant first since the advanced Raytheon-made defense weapon was deployed there.
This came as Ukrainian officials have cited an exceptionally dense attack on Kyiv overnight, which included cruise missiles and drones, and even allegedly Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Ukraine was hit by at least 18 missiles and nine drones were sent, with media reports saying some six ballistic missiles (including Kinzhal) were launched. But the Ukrainians are claiming that most or all of them were intercepted.
Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, described the barrage as “exceptional in its density, with the maximum number of missiles in the shortest time possible,” but that “the vast majority of enemy targets in Kyiv’s airspace were detected and destroyed.” Ukraine is now saying it successfully intercepted multiple hypersonic missiles. A previous claim to have intercepted a hypersonic from days ago was met with widespread skepticism among independent pundits.
The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) has previously dismissed the Ukrainian claims of hypersonic intercepts as “wishful thinking.”
But the Russian side is celebrating a big victory of its own on Tuesday, saying it landed a precision strike a Patriot air defense system in the Ukrainian capital. The US-supplied systems only arrived last month, and just recently entered operation.
The MoD said in its latest press briefing that its attacks destroyed “Ukrainian troops positions and places of storage of munitions, weapons and military hardware delivered from Western nations.”
Russia’s RT followed by stating the following:
A precision strike by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile has destroyed a Patriot air defense system in Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Tuesday. The Ukrainian government previously claimed that Kinzhal missiles had been intercepted by the US-made weapons platform.
The Russian military did not provide further details about the strike, which was the first time Moscow claimed to have hit the long-range system supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers.
I counted 30 Patriot PAC-3 MSE launches here.
The FY2024 costs of these per missile is about $$5,275,000
That was $158,250,000 fired in about two minutes. And as we see, the battery or something else likely got blown up. So it failed in its mission. pic.twitter.com/9rwPnHkNGu
— Fennec_Radar (@RadarFennec) May 16, 2023
Currently there’s speculation over whether a widely circulating video confirms the destruction of a Patriot battery amid the conflicting Russian and Ukrainian claims.
Geopolitical analysis blog Moon of Alabama says the reports of a destroyed Patriot system are accurate:
This is factual:
Patriot Missiles Won’t Save Ukraine – National Interest – May 9, 2023
Patriot systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, Patriot will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when Patriot runs out of interceptors.Moreover, Patriot systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a Patriot radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that Patriot is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.
Those facts were proven last night…
https://twitter.com/RadarFennec/status/1658287607938162690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1658287607938162690%7Ctwgr%5Eab3966e67de52cbc809d0383225ccf33bf2a9e60%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Frussia-says-it-took-out-us-supplied-patriot-missile-unit-hypersonic-strike-kiev
Commenting on the video of the purported Russian direct hit on the Patriot battery, Kim Dotcom wrote on Twitter, “30 US Patriot PAC-3 MSE launch at a cost of $5 million per missile. That’s $150 million gone within 2 mins. At the end the Patriot launch platforms were destroyed by Russian missiles. Why would any military still want to buy Patriot after this failure?”
For these reasons, the Pentagon is unlikely to confirm the event even if true, given it consistently and almost exclusively backs the narrative advanced by Ukraine’s defense ministry. For example, last Thursday US defense officials announced confirmation of Ukraine’s claims that its military intercepted an inbound Russian hypersonic missile utilizing the Patriot system. That was the first time of the war that the Ukrainian side claimed to have accomplished the feat. The Kremlin has rejected this narrative, saying its hypersonic missiles have yet to be defeated.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are still claiming they shot down six entire Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in a single night, which seems dubious given the projectiles travel at multiple times to the speed of sound and have been touted since their development as “impossible” to defend against.
Video: U.S. PATRIOT Missile System Fires 30+ Missiles over Kiev But Gets TAKEN OUT by Russian Hit
One of the much vaunted PATRIOT missile systems given to Kiev to fight Russia, fired about thirty Air Defense missiles overnight but in the end, was hit by a Russian inbound attack. Video below shows the salvos and the final inbound Russian hit. Ukraine is actively (and desperately) trying to have the video removed!
Overnight, Russia engaged in a very thorough missile attack against Ukraine, with what appears to have been a “saturation” attack against Kiev for the express purpose of overwhelming missile defenses.
Ukraine and its supporters are furious that these videos are published. They are actively and aggressively demanding the videos be taken down “because they can identify Air Defense locations for Russia to hit.”
And more:
In fact, there are literally DOZENS of these brain-dead NAZI Ukraine supporters aghast that the videos are available. Why they’re supporting a NAZI regime is beyond me, but then again they’re probably the same idiots who wore masks and got the death dart for COVID! No one pays attention to them because they’re demonstrably stupid.
In the first video below, we can see what __may__ be a PATRIOT system, (might also be NASAMS) deployed near an apartment or other large complex, firing about thirty outbound missiles:
Doing the numbers:
I counted 30 Patriot PAC-3 MSE launches here.
The cost of these per missile in FY2024 is about $5,275,000.
That was $158,250,000 fired in about two minutes. And as we see, the battery or something else got hit and exploded. So it failed in its mission.
The cost of a Patriot battery to the U.S. military is over a billion dollars, so its destruction is a significant thing
$5,275,000 is US port cost- PER MISSILE. By the time they reach Ukraine, cost must have blown to $20 million plus.
If the Russians get the US to use 30 Patriot Missiles a day (or more), soon the US will start seriously eating into it’s stockpile of Patriot Missiles.
I am unsure of the build rate on the Patriot Missiles but I think it is safe to assume that it is nowhere close to even 150 per month (5 per day) let alone 200 a week.
Saturation Attacks so as to overwhelm a defense’s amount of ready to use ammo is already a stated potential attack option by the Chinese against our fleet assets in the Pacific. It looks like that has now become a tactic of the Russians wrt Ukraine’s air defense systems.
Be interesting to know if any Patriot Missiles were in those weapons storage areas that were blown up earlier in the week.
The Patriot system is designed to shoot down sitting ducks as they glide in on a constant trajectory.
The Kinzhal hypersonic missile approaches its target with evasive maneuvers at a speed of over Mach 10. The missile pushes a plasma-mach-wave in front of it making it invisible to radar detection. There is no missile defense system in the world (including high energy lasers) which can shoot these suckers down.
Based on the video above, scratch one Patriot battery at a cost of about $1 billion dollars.
MORE:
This is how you can tell the Ukies had a bad night….
From Ukraine Defense official Telegram account:
“ Kiev is being hit with “Kalibers”.
The head of the office of the President of Ukraine Ermak reports that the air defense is working and urges not to post videos from the sites of Russian missile strikes.
There are also reports from Kiev that the Internet, including mobile, does not work in some areas.”
More from Slavyangrad on Tele:
“ According to local sources for the Kiril Fedorov channel the explosion was at the site of a AD position in the Svyatoshinsky district of Kiev.
Apparently, ambulances have started arriving.”
I would just add that one of the performance objectives of Kinzhal / Kalibr development was specifically against patriot missile batteries.
Tonight proved that the PATRIOT is obsolete technology.
It also proved that the entire western media has been lying through its teeth along with the Pentagon.
MIM-104 Patriot missile batteries stand no chance whatsoever.
They are utterly obsolete against Kinzhal.
It seems to me that the US today has become like a deranged, deviant, LGBTQ/BLMized version of the fall of the Roman Empire’s last years.
Patriot missile base in Kiev destroyed by hypersonic strike – Moscow
A precision strike by a Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missile has destroyed a Patriot air defense system in Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported on Tuesday. The Ukrainian government previously claimed that Kinzhal missiles had been intercepted by the US-made weapons platform.
The Russian military did not provide further details about the strike, which was the first time Moscow claimed to have hit the long-range system supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers.
Kiev reported that it had withstood a massive missile attack by Russian forces on Monday night. The Ukrainian military claimed to have intercepted six Kinzhal missiles, in addition to various other aerial targets.
The Russian ministry confirmed the attack in a daily briefing on Tuesday, stating that it had used long-range precision weapons to hit military targets, including “Ukrainian troops positions and places of storage of munitions, weapons and military hardware delivered from Western nations.”
A video circulating on social media purports to show a Patriot battery deployed in the Ukrainian capital firing several barrages of missiles at incoming Russian targets. Seconds later, a large explosion can be seen in the area.
The Ukrainian government claimed last week that it had used a Patriot system to achieve the first-ever downing of a Kinzhal missile. The projectile is a hypersonic weapon whose speed makes it practically impossible to be intercepted.
Speaking to Russian media, anonymous sources in the Russian Defense Ministry dismissed the Ukrainian claim as “wishful thinking.” Some outlets suggested that Kiev had misidentified debris from a slower ballistic Iskander missile, which is a ground-launched weapon that shares some design features with the air-launched Kinzhal.
Ukraine says it shoots down more missiles than Russia fires – Shoigu
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has refuted claims made by Ukrainian military officials about shooting down six Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles during overnight strikes on targets near the country’s capital city of Kiev.
Ukraine routinely exaggerates the effectiveness of its anti-aircraft defenses, primarily ‘intercepting’ incoming Russian munitions only with public statements, Shoigu told RIA Novosti.
“I have already said that, and I will repeat it again. We have not launched as many ‘Kinzhals’ as they allegedly shoot down every time with their statements. Moreover, the number of these ‘Ukrainian interceptions’ – and who really mans the American [anti-aircraft] complexes there, is still a big question – is three times as high as what we actually launch,” Shoigu stated.
The minister also said that Ukraine “always” misidentifies munitions used by Russia in its media statements. “That’s why they miss them,” he added, without providing any further information on the number of missiles used in the latest barrage.
Ukraine was subjected to a new massive missile and suicide drone barrage overnight, with the country’s capital city of Kiev seeing particularly intense activity by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses, footage circulating online suggests.
Moscow and Kiev have provided drastically different accounts of what happened overnight. Kiev claimed that it had shot down six state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles over the capital, as well as other incoming projectiles, using a battery of the US-made Patriot air defense system. The Russian military, however, said the battery was successfully hit by a Kinzhal missile. Footage available online shows multiple anti-aircraft missiles going towards an unseen target, with at least two explosions seen at the site from which they appeared to be launched.
Western media reports suggested the Patriot battery in question was likely damaged in the strike. According to CNN, citing an unidentified US official, Washington is currently assessing the extent of the damage in order to determine whether the Patriots need to be pulled back or whether on-site repairs by Ukrainian forces would be enough.
