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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

"U.S. has excellent defenses against all classes of ballistic missiles"

This is the first time I've actually read somebody making that claim. Every other take on this topic has been that defenses against long range missiles are woefully inadequate and easily saturated by a low two digit number of missiles with MIRVs.

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Those criticisms are not about the technical capability of missile defenses, but the scale at which they are deployed. If you can shoot down anything, but you only have 40 shots, obviously you can be defeated by anyone who can make 41 of even the crudest missiles. Likewise the best tank in the world is much less effective after it runs out of ammo. But if the issue is merely scale, all you need to do is make more interceptors, which is a finite and predictable expense, as opposed to developing a new technology which could be a massive money pit that ultimately fails.

The US maintains a rather small inventory of interceptors because for the past few decades only small strikes by rogue nations or accidental launches by major powers have been considered likely threats, and a large number of interceptors jeopardizes mutually assured destruction, which has been a much more cost effective counter against large scale nuclear exchanges. But there's nothing saying the US needs to stick to the current number if the global geopolitical situation changes.

Although they are clearly not coming right out and saying it, the quantity of individual launch-cell-installed ballistic missile interceptors deployed in Alaska right now is clearly meant to deal with a threat from North Korea, not from Russia or China. The technology might exist but we would need something like a modern DEW line of many, many more of the same interceptors installed at bases spread throughout northern Canada to deal with a larger threat.

It is assumed right now that the threat from Russia and China is met by the concept of mutually assured destruction, as neither Russia or China have a vast quantity of missile interceptors that could be truly relied upon to destroy hundreds of incoming US missiles. And the fact that US missiles can come from almost anywhere via submarine launch platforms.

> Curdest of missiles

https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/ruaf-glide-bombs-u...

For example, using gliding bombs rather then missiles or dropping dumb bombs from overhead.

You don't use or need missile interceptors to deal with bombers.

> But if the issue is merely scale, all you need to do is make more interceptors, which is a finite and predictable expense, as opposed to developing a new technology which could be a massive money pit that ultimately fails.

Except it costs many times more to make an anti-ballistic-missile interceptor then the original ballistic missile.

There's a fundamental asymmetry here, because interceptors have to be extremely high performance to be useful but the launching missiles can be as cheap as possible as long as it can throw enough penetration aids into the approximate trajectory.

So regardless of how much is spent on such a program, any country could spend a small fraction to fully defeat it, maybe as little as 10%.

Unless we gradually produce enough interceptors over many years to disarm MAD. Then we could notice some other state building a lot of ballistic missiles and preemptively strike.

Hence why countries carefully monitor breakout capabilities, including interceptors.

Or, if the other country is not ran by fools, they'll notice that you're building enough interceptors to break MAD and pre-emptively strike you.

I would think unnecessarily invoking MAD would make the other country fools.

The alternative is that MAD ceases to exist, with one country having a stockpile of interceptors. That makes the other country fools anyway.

Since they’re fools (read: potentially getting nuked) either way it could appear rational to invoke MAD with a preemptive strike.

You've just described a situation that follows from building interceptors, where the country building interceptors unnecessarily commits genocide.

> Except it costs many times more to make an anti-ballistic-missile interceptor then the original ballistic missile.

That doesn't sound correct to me. They're both rockets, one is much larger than the other and has a payload (in the case where we're looking at a failure of deterrence) made out outrageously expensive material. I mean, you can construct an argument that one is already built and paid for, or that 70's/80's technology was cheaper inherently, etc...

But from first principles, no. An ICBM is more expensive than an ABM.

Do you have any idea what your talking about?

The launching missile can carry dozens of penetration aids, each one needing an interceptor warhead.

Plus, the physical structure and fuel are by far the cheapest parts, it's everything else, guidance systems, maneuvering systems, etc., that make up the majority of the cost. Which each interceptor warhead needs but which dumb penetration aids don't.

Maybe you could cite a reference on the costs of these things instead? I'm just saying I don't buy it. They're both extremely expensive, but ICBMs, even accounted per warhead, are more so.

THAAD interceptors look to be ~$100M each from a google search. I remember seeing a leaked document that suggested up to 3 interceptors would be fired at each target to guarantee a kill, but I can't find the document now, sorry. A Trident-D5 missile is $30M, and can carry up to 14 (small) warheads (which would likely be a mix of larger warheads and penetration aids). Trident is still in production, but note that it's an economical US missile. So given this very approximate math, ~$2M on offense could soak up ~$300M on defense. The cost comparison would look worse for the defense if you don't assume the (high) cost of a US offensive missile for parity.

This is hilariously cherry-picked. THAAD is extremely expensive if that's the case. Wikipedia says you can get a Patriot for just $4M. Also SLBM's as actually deployed aren't using maximum MIRV counts, both for treaty and role reasons. Wikipedia says 4 RV's on average for Trident, FWIW. But the big whopper is that you're forgetting to account for the $4B SUBMARINE (just $200M per missile though) required to deploy those missiles in their cost!

Good job though. Honestly the numbers are closer than I'd have expected. But ICBMs remain more expensive.

A patriot has a very small coverage. And I was under the impression it can't even take something as fast an ICBM.

PAC-3 MSE could probably take out an ICBM during its initial ascent, assuming it was in range. But that's an extremely small window for interception.

A Patriot can only intercept theater ballistic missiles, which are an order of magnitude slower than an ICBM.

I chose Trident because I wanted a fair(er) comparison of costs due to purchasing power. If you want to use North Korean ICBM pricing, it's $30M[1]. THAAD is very expensive, that you're right about...but it's also the only interceptor that has a chance of success against an ICBM. Please note as well, trident is typically deployed with far fewer warheads likely among other reasons because it doesn't need to be an interceptor sponge, per its role. If you're North Korea with a small arsenal, every one needs to count against an opponent with THAAD.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3180997/nor...

Wiki says that $800M gives you a battery of 6 launchers (each equipped with 8 missiles), 2 tactical centers and 1 radar. So the upper bound for one missile is 16M. Still very expensive of course, but not 100M expensive.

Pretty sure that price for D-5 doesn't include the cost of the W-88 warhead. I would assume at a minimum those would be $10M a piece. Still doesn't make it more expensive than THAAD however.

Control systems are one per penetrator, aren't they? Same with nukes, if we're talking about them.

I'd say that it's exactly the fuel, the engine, and the whole chassis of an anti-ballistic missile what's so expensive. An ABM has very little time to do its job. It has to launch instantly, and accelerates at 100g or so, and then must also maneuver at this circumstances. It should also pack enough punch to destroy a warhead which is a relatively small metal needle, built to withstand the mechanical and thermal loads of an orbital reentry.

As a contrast, an ICBM can start with much more soft acceleration, can spend 10-20 seconds preparing for launch without loss of efficiency, and does not have to maneuver much during ascent and the orbital part.

No, penetration aids don't need any control system, they're literally just dumb pieces of metal. Of course they won't explode or be accurate at all, but that's irrelevant to soaking up interceptors which need to be a launched well before impact.

It's literally sending up some of the most sophisticated vehicles ever made by mankind to defeat mostly chunks of metal. Hence why even the US can't afford it in any meaningful quantities.

Everything on an interceptor is much more expensive because of the much higher performance requirements. But the fuel and structure will still be a lot cheaper compared to the rest of system.

What’s your take on the directed energy assessment in the article? Seems the author is ultimately advocating that route

Satellites in LEO and MEO can be destroyed with reasonably affordable conventional missiles nowadays, and it's impossible to hide or maneuver satellites in the few minutes it takes a missile to get up, so it doesn't really make sense to expect that any such system will survive long enough to do anything in a hot war scenario.

Hence why nobody really wants to weaponize space, spending money on military systems that have no survivability isn't very attractive.

You don't have to fire more ICBMs, you can put more RVs on the same ICBM. (And you don't have to put warheads on all of them).

And remember that acceleration is what costs, not speed. To shoot down an ICBM you need to hit it with a similar mass at a similar speed, and you need to do it in less time (because the ICBM launched first), so your interceptor needs to accelerate harder.

>>>To shoot down an ICBM you need to hit it with a similar mass at a similar speed

Why would it need to be a similar mass?

This is entirely wrong.

To intercept a missile you need to intercept it - that's it. You don't need to be traveling the same speed, or have the same mass, you just need to be physically where it is at the time it's there.

ICBMs aren't armored - and they can't be. They're spacecraft of a sort, and doing almost any amount of intentional damage will prevent them from functioning. Nuclear warheads are hard to detonate - the behavior if disrupted is the weapon likely goes inert because you've ruined the implosion mirror or timing circuitry.

The problem is that interception is hard because your engagement times are very short, and you're off-trajectory. Initial deviations in your aiming create larger and larger errors at the target, and any sort of maneuverability on the warhead's part means you're unlikely to be able to correct in time - hence the focus on trying to hit missiles in the boost phase, when they're by necessity more predictable.

There's no ICBM by the time any realistic interception scenario takes place. There's a slightly diverging cloud of warheads, chaff, jammers, light (inflatable metallized film) and heavy (small thingies that produce plasma in the higher atmosphere) decoys. The interception of a single target is hard because of what you said, the interception of any realistic salvo is impossible due to the sheer volume of incoming stuff.

To be fair it depends on where the interception takes place - if in space, no decoys etc have been deployed yet.

Nope, the MIRVing/decoy deployment is done right after the boost phase, that way you need the least fuel to achieve the same target spread. That's some 5 minutes into the flight and mere hundreds of miles from the launch site. If it's Russia you're talking about, the missiles (or rather what's left of them) are still over their territory, some 200km up.

Using one principle (nukes are expensive) isn't the same thing as deducing something from first principles. In particular, it's not enough, especially given hypersonic missile technology, to just take an ICBM, reprogram it, and voila you have an ABM. Because the cost of even a single warhead off an MIRV ICBM getting through is so devastating, the cost of a ABM system includes a huge number of missiles to increase the chance of catching the incoming attack. And then, once the ABM missile reaches the incoming ICBM. How does it neutralize the threat? What technology do we have that causes a lot of destruction? Oh that's right, nukes. If the ABM system uses nukes to neutralize the incoming threat, then it's very much not clear that the singular principle (nukes are expensive) doesn't also apply to the ABM system.

Some subjects, like computer science, which is still a very young area of study are very open to learnings from first principles. Others, like the geopolitics of nuclear deterrence, are deeper than any one person can even begin to understand.

Current interceptors do not use nuclear warheads. This makes it both cheaper and more expensive. It requires a more complicated hit to kill system than merely getting the nuclear warhead close enough. However, the system as a whole ends up cheaper. You don't need to get National Command Authority to authorize a launch anymore, because you're not using nukes. You can get that delegated down to whichever officer is in charge of the system that day.

The objective of National Missile Defense isn't to stop all the warheads, it's to make the attacker's job harder. There's a bunch of ways it does that. One is that the defender gets to choose what it stops. So they can stop all the warheads going to one target. But the attacker doesn't know ahead of time, so they need to launch enough warheads at each target to destroy it regardless of whether it's actually defended or not. So 1550 warheads no longer hit 750 targets, but rather they hit 75 targets. It really sucks to be one of those 75 targets, because most of them get absolutely destroyed, but the other 90% of potential targets are much better off, because they didn't get hit at all.

Another way is that ballistic missile accuracy depends on how far away from the target it gets separated from the missile bus that has the guidance system. If they separate too late, the interceptor will hit the bus before separation. Which kills all the warheads. So they have to move it back, which makes it less accurate, which means it's more likely the warhead will miss the target.

A third way is that they may decide they need to carry penetration aids. But there's a bunch of really fancy tricks radars and IR sensors can do to see which is a real thing, and which isn't, which amount to: the penetration aid which is best at mimicking a warhead ends up being the same size and shape as a real warhead. So they might as well just use a real warhead.

Developing the capability to make nuclear weapons _at all_ is outrageously expensive, but once you can make one of them you can make hundreds for not significantly more cost, relatively speaking.

No need to mass produce the nukes, dummy payloads will do just fine. A single ICBM could deploy dozens-hundreds of credible looking warheads. These are inherently cheap relative to building independent missile interceptors.

They already do this. Those are part of what's called "penetration aids".

Let's go back to first principles. I launch 3 mortor rounds at you. What would you need to do, to be able to detect, intercept and disable said rounds before they reach you? I don't think anybody would say the cost to intercept and disable (whether by blowing up etc) those mortor rounds is even in the order of magnitude the cost of the 3 rounds and the mortor combined.

A single R-36MUTTKh missile from the 80s carries 10 warheads and an unspecified number of light and heavy decoys. A single regiment (10 missiles) will saturate anything and everything.

That's ballistic warheads, add any maneuvering re-entry capability and ABM defences are complete joke. Luckily for the humanity, MAD is alive and well.

That's the scale argument, yes.

> Those criticisms are not about the technical capability of missile defenses, but the scale at which they are deployed.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disastrous-us-approach-stra...

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-missile-defense/

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/30/15713966/ballistic-missil...

https://www.extremetech.com/defense/182175-the-united-states...

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/05/28/pentagon-hit...

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/08/21/dod-tanks-re...

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-10/news/pentagon-seeks-...

https://missilethreat.csis.org/a-new-generation-of-homeland-...

> But if the issue is merely scale, all you need to do is make more interceptors,

Attackers can choose where to attack. Defenders have to defend every city. For example, THAAD can protect about a 200km radius, so for every ICBM and SLBM, you need to add an additional missile to EVERY one of hundreds of sites.

They also need to all be kept ready at all times, replaced periodically etc.

You're making the single most common misunderstanding of the United State's ICBM defense capability, because you assume the goal is to "defend every city".

The real goal is quite different. The math starts to look very different when the defender can choose where to defend.

Assume a first strike against the US. The US has ~400 siloed missiles and a handful of airbases that can launch bombers. A reasonable goal for a first strike is to destroy those, preventing or substantially limiting a counterattack. Assuming some failure rate, using 2 warheads per silo gives you some redundancy, so 800 warheads needed for this phase of the attack.

What good is 40 intercepters against 800 incoming warheads? The US can choose which of those 800 to target. 40 intercepters can protect 20 silos from two incoming each. And that means the US can counterattack. To guarantee killing every single silo, the attacker must now have 20+2 warheads targeted at every single silo. The attacker has to build far far more offensive weapons than the defender needs to build intercepters, if the attacker wishes to avoid a counterattack.

Protection of the population comes from MAD alone, not by interception. (this of course isn't a reassuring thought, so this case isn't really made to the public).

That is why maneuvering hypersonics are considered such a threat: it removes the predictability of which warheads are going to land where, preventing that kind of choice of where to defend.

The US doesn’t need missile defence to maintain second strike capability.

That’s what SSBNs are for.

Indeed, which is why it is a bit silly to spend so much money on both. And yet the US does.

Silly if military prowess is your goal. Brilliant if funneling money to the military-industrial complex, garnering huge donations from lobbyists and making sure that all your friends and extended family are guaranteed lucrative careers is the goal.

Strategically, the ICBM fields are warhead sponges. Each one only has a single warhead, but you'd want to target each of the silos, plus each of the launch control centers with more than one warhead, in order to keep them from launching. So a missile squadron would get hit with something on the order of 110 warheads in order to keep 50 warheads from launching.

But there are other strategic targets in or near cities. And those, it goes from having 2 warheads each, to havine 20+2 warheads each. So for the cities that don't get defended, it really sucks. But now instead of 1550 warheads hitting ~750 targets, it's 1550 warheads hitting ~75 targets. Because the attacker doesn't know what's going to survive to the target and has to choose their top targets that must get plastered.

Except it's worse: AEGIS BMD ships can launch from pierside. They don't have the range to defend the entire US but do for about half the US. So that's another wrench in attacker's plans (exactly how many SM-3 can hit depends on how many missiles are available at that time, which is a much more difficult thing to determine than the number of GMD interceptors).

MAD isn't a military doctrine. You won't see it on any doctrine publication of any service. The problem is the "Mutual" part. We don't want to die for our country. We want the other poor bastards to die for there. It's merely "Assured Destruction".

THAAD is what you deploy to a place like South Korea where that 200km radius covers the entire country. For protecting something like the US mainland, you would use GMD, which can cover large sections of the continent.

But even if you did just have to build large numbers of short range interceptors, that's still perfectly acceptable. Likewise for upkeep and maintenance. You don't need to protect everything, you only need to protect the targets that justify the cost.

> 'all you need to do is make more interceptors'

There's a lot more it to than that. These systems are not only absurdly expensive (Patriots [1] costs about $1 billion for the system, and $4 million for a missile - probably more nowadays on both accounts), but also entail extensive training, operational, repair, and general logistic issues. A single Patriot requires a skilled crew of ~90 to operate with a peak theoretic range of < 100 miles.

And the systems are not invincible. When Russia either damaged or destroyed one recently in Ukraine, it seems they did the most obvious strategy and simply drained its battery (which seemed to hold ~32 missiles) before going after the system itself. Finally I'd also add in manufacturing and other issues. The manufacturing of alot of these systems has major practical raw material constraints (to say nothing of the manufacturing itself) when you talk about doing things at truly large scale.

---

That said, I agree this idea sounds more like a MIC money grab than anything else. You'd need a ridiculous number of these systems to provide sufficient coverage, it'd entail completely scrapping the Outer Space Treaty creating an overt weaponization race, and also create some really juicy targets for relatively cheap anti-satellite missile systems. The reality is that there is no such thing as a perfect defense because it's just so much easier, and cheaper, to create a +1 version of offense, in the scenario of a peer to peer battle.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

That $1B patriot tag includes a lot of missiles. In fact majority if cost is missiles

He is also missing that the each Kinzhal reportedly costs upwards of 10 million USD which is more than 2x the cost of a Patriot missile, its closer to 3x.

I have read some posts claiming that they observed multiple patriot missiles (3x) were fired for each threat. If so, it might even the cost out a bit.

It’s not just cost too - they physically cant make a lot of them. But yeah like other commenter had mentioned you fire at least two interceptors for every target

That is the scale argument.

This is probably better interpreted as "the US has the best defenses against ballistic missiles". The Patriot missile is proven to defeat Scud missiles in real combat, and THAAD is the most thoroughly tested system against long range ballistic missiles. Is that going to stop 5,000 ICBMs with penetration aids launched against the US? Almost certainly not, and I don't think the author meant it that way.

I see. We do have good systems, but too few to be of practical relevance in most threat situations.

The North Korea case shows that the step from having one missile to having 100 is extremely short compared to going from having no missiles to having one missile.

> We do have good systems, but too few to be of practical relevance in most threat situations

We somewhat intentionally lack defences against MAD salvos. Our defenses will likely remain adequate for defending against the likes of Pyongyang.

I don't think that's a consensus view? Jeffrey Lewis says the opposite,

- "The point is that North Korea is clearly aimed at overwhelming the US missile defense system in Alaska... At that cost, I am pretty sure North Korea can add warheads faster than we can add interceptors."

https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/13150050310751232...

Can someone explain - even if they got one through, wouldn't North Korea basically be a wasteland 30 minutes later?

> even if they got one through, wouldn't North Korea basically be a wasteland 30 minutes later

The idea is if to have a credible threat to keep us from acting first, as well as giving many countries a vested interest in the stability of the regime: if the Kims go, North Korea goes, and so does somebody else.

Congratz, you grasped the facet of MAD that is unacceptable losses - for the US a single warhead getting through is too high a price to destroy pretty much anyone.

The danger is that an unstable leader would do it anyway to martyr themselves and their country.

I read that Patriot missiles cost $5m each. Should make a contract with SpaceX to crank 'em out for $20,000 each.

Cost of individual military items is often clouded by the need to amortize development cost over a relatively small production run. Making an additional missile beyond the contracted quantity does not cost $5m.

> a relatively small production run

Over 10,000 have been built. The R&D cost should have been amortized away by now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

R&D has never stopped. Raytheon has a large team of engineers working on enhancements even today.

The difference between an original Patriot MIM-104 and today's PAC-3 MSE is huge.

Yes - best against moderately complex threats in limited numbers. For reference Recent SM6 test (FTM33) shot down 1 of 2 short range ballistic missiles with 4 interceptors in what's described as "most complex" test so far, but "most complex" hasn't hinted at dealing with anything like counter measures. Reality is, even US missile defense also haven't been seriously stress tested.

The Patriot has a very high failure rate and isn't all it's cracked up to be.

https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/scuds-vs-patriots-desert-s...

https://www.gao.gov/products/t-nsiad-92-27

Those are 30 year old documents. Much like everything else the patriot technology has advanced a lot since then.

Alright, here's a more recent one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Riyadh_missile_strike

"However, according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at CNS, the Saudis failed to intercept the missiles following a malfunction of the MIM-104 Patriot system.[3] One video appeared to show a Patriot missile launch on Sunday night go rapidly wrong, with the missile changing course midair, crashing into a neighborhood in Riyadh and exploding. Another appeared to detonate shortly after being launched in the Saudi capital. " Pretty much the same failure mode as 30 years ago I would say, so maybe those ancient documents are still relevant today.

We’re watching a hot war where old PATRIOT batteries are downing Russia’s newest missiles. Given that context, this looks more like user error by the Saudis than any shortcomings of the system.

Also a poor example. The Saudi's are infamous for extremely poor training and readiness in there military forces. This is how they lost Abrams tanks in Yemen in a way that would never happen to US forces.

Apparently Ukraine fired a volley of 30 patriots last week and the Kinzhal still got through.

That's 10% of all patriots manufactured in 1 year.

What are you talking about? Russia launched Kinzhal missiles as part of a larger saturation attack on Kyiv earlier this month and they were all successfully intercepted by the US Patriot system, operated by Ukraine. One piece of debris hit a Patriot radar, but no systems were lost.[1][2]

The Russians also arrested the scientists who helped develop the Kinzhal and charged them with treason due to the apparent failure during this attack.[3] Not something you usually do if your weapon system is successful.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-patriot-kinzha... [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-06/ukraine-s... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-hypersonic-missile...

You're wrong on that second part. The arrests happened before the strike. I'm disappointed how many media outlets obscured this point in favor of the narrative.

No, that is wrong too.

Arrests happened previously, and then 3 additional individuals were arrested after the most recent attack.

In total, there are currently 16 individuals related to the program who have been arrested. 3 of them are facing life in prison for treason.

He's wrong on all parts. The arrests were about the technology being leaked to the Chinese, the "kinzhal missile" the notoriously unreliable Klitschko is proudly standing next to in the NBC photos he linked to is a BETAB 500.

The Ukrainian air force itself even denied that any Kinzhals had been shot down:

https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-air-force-denies-reports-13...

Your source is from May 5th. Subsequent Kinzhals were confirmed shot down much more recently.

> On May 4, 2023, Ukraine used a U.S.-supplied Patriot battery to down a Russian Kinzhal missile, which Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced in 2018 was a “hypersonic” weapon that could overcome all existing air defense systems. Russia’s state news agency tried to maintain this claim by arguing that the shootdown was a fake report. Yet just 12 days afterward, Ukraine shot down six Kinzhals [1] that Russia fired in an assault on Kyiv. Both shootdowns have been verified by U.S. government sources.[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-russ... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/05/23/u...

Over a dozen scientists were arrested at various times in the past year, but three additional scientists were arrested and charged with treason this month after the failed attack. Using some critical thinking, we can see how this was a direct reaction to the failure of the Kinzhal missiles to impact targets.

Additionally, an open letter from the Russian scientific community was published strongly denouncing these arrests this month. The "media" isn't being misleading - they are reporting the events as they are happening.

>Ukraine’s air force claimed

>Ukraine Says

Surely Ukraine, being in the middle of a war, would have no incentive to lie for propaganda purposes. As the other commenter pointed out they were arrested way earlier and the reason was because they sold secrets to China not because of any failure of the project.

The volley was fired at a massed coordinated strike of 6 Kinzhals, 9 Kalibr cruise missiles, and 3 Iskander ballistic missiles all arriving at the same time. All missiles were intercepted but one managed to incapacitate a single Patriot launcher after being intercepted (unclear if there was an actual detonation). A Patriot battery consists of multiple dispersed launchers, radar, and control units. It's hard to imagine better performance than this for an air defense system tasked with protecting a capital city.

The US has a variable capacity for Patriot missile manufacturing but its baseline far exceeds the 300 missiles per year that you quoted.

There was a clear large explosion on the ground while the Patriot was no longer intercepting. This wasn't just debris getting through.

That said, it's not necessarily due to failure to intercept that this happened - we have video of 30 interceptors being launched in rapid succession, and it's likely all 32 interceptors in the battery had been launched and expended when the final strike and explosion happened. So it's more of a successful saturation attack than an interception failure.

PAC3 is a completely different and physically smaller missile.

Yet they're not that much better. Per Wikipedia (I have edited out successful intercepts!):

Syrian civil war (2014–)

{...}

In July 2016, two Israeli Patriot missiles missed an incoming drone launched from Syria, according to Russian media. Israeli Air Defence Command fired two Patriot missiles, but they did not manage to destroy the target. Russia Today stated that the drone penetrated four kilometers into Israeli airspace, and then flew back into Syria. In June 2018, a single Israeli Patriot missile was fired toward a drone which was approaching Israel from Syria. The missile missed its target, and the drone turned back to Syria.

Service with Saudi Arabia

In March 2018, another missile, apparently fired from Yemen, was intercepted by a Patriot missile over Riyadh. Missile experts via news agencies cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Saudi Arabian Patriot defense. According to videos, one interceptor exploded just after launch and another did a "U turn" midair toward Riyadh.

In September 2019, the six battalions of Patriot missile defense systems owned by Saudi Arabia failed to protect its oil facilities from attacks by multiple drones and suspected cruise missiles during the Abqaiq–Khurais attack.

I think it's important to bear in mind that the Saudi defense forces for decades have been show forces; they buy expensive gear, then fail to maintain and train on it.

Yes, so I've read but still the Patriot they lost to a Houthi drone strike was recently bought from Greece, so I think it was fairly new and well maintained.

The equipment may be fine and up to date (though missile versions vary widely), but that doesn't mean the operators are up to snuff.

This is a weird set of evidence to pull out when there's a war going on in Europe where the interception rate of Kinzhal missiles went from 0% to 100% under a barrage attack, specifically after the Patriot missile system was installed (and in said barrage where the Patriot installation itself was specifically targeted in essentially the most optimum possible attack scenario).

I was merely pointing out that Patriot systems are not 100% accurate as OP had said. Nothing specifically about the recent events in Ukr.

The salient point about old news about the Patriot system is not about technical capabilities, but about how, years ago, it was first reported as being effective and then as not so effective.

It could be completely different technology today, but still have the same lack of accurate reporting.

How would we know? "Those who say don't know, and those who know don't say"

That was 3 decades ago, and before PAC-3.

Nobody has 5000 ICBMs Russia has around 300 supposing that they actually work.

"The Patriot missile is proven to defeat Scud missiles in real combat" - no it isn't. It quite notoriously mostly failed to intercept Scud missiles in real combat. It has been heavily upgraded since and modern Patriot batteries would likely succeed at intercepting Scud missiles, but this hasn't been proven in real combat.

This was IIRC an issue back in 1990s due to how the system calculated time. So operation of a system continuously for more than 20 hours would cause the system to become ineffective until it was rebooted.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~smp/COMP205/LECTURES/ERROR/lec23/node...

Thanks in major part to Israel, modern patriot systems have been rigorously tested via fire. To equate the current systems to the ones from 30 years ago is very disingenuous.

Patriot missile batteries in Ukraine have so far successfully intercepted all Khinzal Hyper-sonic Missiles launched by Russia. (At least, the ones that entered their Area of Operation)

The comment I replied to specifically said "The Patriot missile is proven to defeat Scud missiles in real combat". That is a false claim, as I asserted, and none of what you mention says anything about defeating Scud missiles in real combat.

Yes, they have. The widely publicized failure due to clock skew does not invalidate all the successful interceptions: https://www.ngwrc.org/files/IRAQ'S%20USE%20OF%20SCUDS%20vet%...

I think the claim is true, I also think that a lot of missiles would get through.

A baseball analogy, an excellent, best in the world baseball batter will hit 4 out of every ten balls thrown at him. that is still an awful lot of balls that get through.

For real world numbers note how well Israel does against all the ballistic missiles thrown at them, also note that these are slow short range ballistic missiles.

> [the ballistic missiles thrown at...Israel] are slow short range ballistic missiles

They're artillery rockets [1][2]. Not maneuverable to my knowledge, but continuously (and noisily) accelerating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_artillery

The motors on these burn out pretty quickly, after which point they become atmospheric ballistic (not truly ballistic because they have fins and there's atmosphere). This is true of all basic rocket artillery generally.

(quibble with the analogy,

> baseball batter will hit 4 out of every ten balls thrown at him

if you're talking about batting .400, that's 4 per 10 "at-bats", where each at-bat will on average consist of a multiple of balls thrown.

)

The guy was the program manager of THAAD. He is not going to write that his work is worthless. That would have stopped his career a long time ago.

Not that it means that what he says is necessarily untrue but you have to take it with a huge grain of salt. While definitely a subject expert, Tony Brunoula is approximately as far from a neutral party as one can be on this question.

There’s not many neutral parties when it comes to this topic. I’ll take domain expert on this.

And that was recently demonstrated in Ukraine, where a Patriot battery fired 32 missiles against incoming targets[1], but got hit nonetheless. It looks to me like missile defence works well in very unbalanced situations, such as Hezbollah's home-made rockets against Israeli Iron Dome, but is easily saturated when against a roughly equal adversary.

[1] IIRC Ukrainians and US say there were 29 incoming missiles; Russians say there were 6 or may be 9 (unsure). Both numbers are probably made up, and truth is probably in the middle, 12 to 18 or so.

> where a Patriot battery fired 32 missiles against incoming targets, but got hit nonetheless

It also shot down Russian hypersonic missiles [1]. I don't know which variant [2] we sent Kyiv, but this is almost certainly an old PATRIOT battery taking out "cutting edge" Russian hypersonics.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-systems-rep...

[2] https://www.armyrecognition.com/united_states_american_missi...

Kinzhal is an air-launched ballistic missile. It's roughly an Iskander dropped from a plane rather than fired from a truck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-47M2_Kinzhal

It is hypersonic, but it follows a very predictable high-altitude trajectory, so it's the easiest kind of hypersonic missile to intercept.

I read a good thread about the various kinds of hypersonics a while ago, but can't find it now. Broadly, there are three classes: hypersonic cruise missiles (like Tomahawk but much faster), hypersonic glide vehicles (basically ballistic missile warheads with wings), and classical ballistic missiles. It's the former two which are new and scary. This touches on it, but is rather one-sided: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2023/05/23/u...

It was unveiled in 2018 by Putin alongside the Zircon anti-ship and Avangard glide vehicle [1]. Within the context of Russian hypersonic ballistic missiles, Kinzhal is the flagship.

You're absolutely correct, by the way. And that's the author's point. (Which I've been partial towards for a long time.) Hypersonic missiles are not the game changer they're claimed to be, and to the degree they open new tactical ground, the United States is well set to at the very least match adversaries' capabilities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_%27super_weapons%27

The thing with Kinzhal is that it is not maneuvering, but the Russian agitprop muddies the waters by focusing on the "hypersonic" part. However, as the article points out, an actual maneuvering hypersonic missile - which is something that all major players are working on - is indeed a major threat. It's just unlikely that Russia would have that any time soon, given the overall state of their technological development demonstrated during the war so far.

> an actual maneuvering hypersonic missile - which is something that all major players are working on - is indeed a major threat

I've heard Avangard lacks propulsive glide. That means it's ballistic in space, and only maneuverable (at the expense of range and speed) at the terminal phase. This is solvable because it's old tech–basically MIRVs.

Close to MARVs, but with presumably greater maneuvering capacity (the “glide” description suggests this) which necessarily trades speed to exploit.

There is a 4th kind of hypersonic missile: Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS)

> rocket launched into orbital flight, which later re-entered the atmosphere and released a maneuverable glide vehicle travelling at hypersonic speeds

https://www.apln.network/analysis/policy-briefs/chinese-frac...

I'm still failing to see the difference between this and MIRVs. (But with fins!)

FOBS has a much lower apogee for the same range, meaning it stays below the horizon longer (giving less time to intercept it.)

https://stateofthenation.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/FOBS-...

Furthermore, it can in principle come from any direction, which was relevant historically when it was expected that Soviet ICBMs would come over the North Pole.

If they are actually glide vehicles these are exactly the hypersonic glide weapons discussed above, if thy “glide” part is an exaggeration, they are just classic ballistic missiles with maneuverable attack vehicles (MARVs), which are widely used, they aren’t, in any case, outside of the three categories presented.

The glide part would be in the three categories above, but not the whole system, which has extra capabilities (unlimited loitering time for example).

Its perhaps worth noting that literal hypersonic “ballistic missile warheads with wings” were developed by the US for ICBMs in the 1970s, and are deployed by many countries on ICBMs or MRBMs (ironically, not the US, whose last MARV-capable missiles were the Pershing II, retired in 1991.)

I think the deal with the Avengard (and the US C-HGB as used on the soon-to-be-deployed LRHW) is bigger wings / lifting body giving it greater maneuvering capacity through a flatter flight phase trading more of its speed for lateral displacement than earlier maneuverable ballistic missile warheads.

> Russian hypersonic missiles

There are zero such missiles. It's all marketing BS. They have air launched ballistic missiles. These are not "hypersonic missiles" by any accepted definition.

(If the Russian definition is valid, then the V2 was a "hypersonic missile").

In fact hypersonic missiles are pretty common. Every rocket that leaves Earth’s orbit is ‘hypersonic’. There is nothing inherently special about being ‘hypersonic’ in general. In space everything achieves hypersonic speed quite easily(ICBM’s and space rockets) are all hypersonic when they enter space. The trick of hypersonic missiles is to do that within the constraints of earth’s atmosphere. The US has them:

https://www.raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/what-we-do/hypers...

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/hypersonic...

and apparently the Chinese:

https://theconversation.com/chinas-hypersonic-missiles-threa...

It's unclear whether they have any in operational service right now, but the Zircon is certainly a true hypersonic maneuvering cruise missile, rather than merely a ballistic missile or even glide vehicle.

"It also shot down Russian hypersonic missiles"

You forgot "Kiev says".

FUD alert.

Tell that Reuters and NYT.

given russia's long history of dishonesty in their claims (e.g. 'we won't attack Ukraine, that's just western propaganda', 'we are the victims and not the aggressors', 'we aren't raping children in Ukraine'), the truth is, by default, most likely to be the opposite of what russia says (but of course, subject to dispute if russia actually has reliable verified evidence of their claims)

it's simply the bayesian prior at this point; the null hypothesis

The Ukraine has its own rich history of dishonesty.

The first day of war: Ukraine says that Russian warship killed with missiles all Ukranian border guards on the Zmeiniy island. Everyone is shocked by this senseless cruelty. Russian MoD says that guards are taken prisoners. Nobody believes.

Two weeks later: Ukrainian Defence Minister gives medals to the border guards safely returned to Kiev.

maybe, maybe not. Two things are for sure, though:

1. there is no such thing as "The Ukraine" anymore, only Ukraine, as in the independent country with internationally recognized borders [including Crimea]

2. given russia's long history of dishonesty in their claims (e.g. 'we won't attack Ukraine, that's just western propaganda', 'we are the victims and not the aggressors', 'we aren't raping children in Ukraine'), the truth is, by default, most likely to be the opposite of what russia says (but of course, subject to dispute if russia actually has reliable verified evidence of their claims)

again, it's simply the bayesian prior at this point; the null hypothesis

What "maybe, maybe not"?

It means what you say might be true, or it might be false, but either way it has no bearing on russia's long history of dishonesty, and thus has no bearing on my comment

indeed, whataboutism itself is a form of dishonest debate which was invented, and is used to distract from russia's long history of dishonesty (here for example).

guess who invented it? russia, of course.

"say might be true, or it might be false"

So you don't bother to google and check if the Ukraine has a habit of lying too, and prefer to believe anything coming from Kiev only because Russia says the opposite.

The word 'whataboutism' is a form of dishonest debate and used to distract from critique of double standards.

"guess who invented it? russia, of course."

I'd say it was invented during Cold War by some American in search of rhetorical device to distract from their double standards.

Theres no evidence it hit anything, other then that of the Russian government who has shown itself in this conflict that it is incapable of doing anything but lying. In fact people found where it was doing deployed and theres not even any scorch marks, everything points to the thousandeth Russian lie in this war more then anything else.

As there are no evidence that any Kinzhal was intercepted.

The lack of any scorch marks or impact craters around or anywhere near the patriot sight is a pretty good indication it was intercepted.

Same with the giant flashes in the sky.

"The lack of any scorch marks"

Even the US says there was 'minimal damage'. [0]

There is no evidence to the number of Kinzhals launched and to the number of Kinzhals intercepted.

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-...

> Even the US says there was 'minimal damage'. [0]

Yes, minimal damage from flying debris from something, but it's clear from that satellite imagery nothing hit any part of an actual patriot.

> There is no evidence to the number of Kinzhals launched and to the number of Kinzhals intercepted.

Exactly, no evidence of anything but minimal damage to a patriot either. Kinda pathetic given the size of the attack that Russia cannot even take out one air defense system that they clear know where is.

"no evidence of anything"

Including the number of 'intercepted' Kinzhals which is exactly my point. I don't see what you are trying to argue about.

the point is that the default is russia is lying, due to their long history of lying, and nothing anybody else says or does changes that

It's comical that you called it 'bayesian prior' and now say you'll never update probabilities.

the flaw in your logic is that things (!russia) does don't affect the high probability that russia is lying, which is, again, the bayesian prior

only the changing behavior of russia can change russia's history of behavior, and it can choose to change in a more honest direction anytime (but has not done so)

They do, imagine two states that both have high probability of lying and one says "A" and another says "not A". They can't be both lying, can they?

you're thinking about it wrong, they don't have any effect on each other, even if you think you can use one to reason about the other

if russia says A, we can assume !A due to russia's history of dishonesty, literally with no other information necessary

someone else being dishonest, even if true, doesn't make russia more honest, so we can still assume !A

indeed, because russia's history of dishonesty is so long and strong, we can stop right there, unless russia proves its probable lies are actually truthful (such is the fate of a liar)

if they don't like it, they can start being honest and keep it up for a few decades to show they've changed

Now that's just pure russophobia.

is it? doesn't seem to be.

indeed, calling the world's totally normal reaction to russia's history of dishonesty "russophobia" seems a little defensive and russophilic

Well, I equally distrust American, Ukrainian and Russian governments. All of them showed themselves as serial liars just like lots of other governments.

When two governments give mutually exclusive statements, you can't just pick one country and say this one is always lying because that would mean that you think that another habitual liar is always telling the truth. Or you can, but that just makes you a russophobe.

> I equally distrust American, Ukrainian and Russian governments.

given such a false equivalence, and even more whataboutism, it is then good that that opinion is not the opinion of most countries in the world (by UN vote)

after all, fewer than 3% of countries, representing fewer than 3% of people in the world, were willing to go on record saying they trust russia's claims and excuses when they said the same thing

> When two governments give mutually exclusive statements, you can't just pick one country and say this one is always lying

I didn't say they're always lying, I pointed out that's simply the default state until russia PROVES its claims.

can we do that? it depends: is one of them russia, a country with a long history of lying more often than telling the truth on matters such as this?

if so, then you totally can treat it as the default, because again, and for the third time: X being dishonest doesn't make russia honest, only russia being honest makes russia honest

meanwhile, you can't just ignore russia's dishonesty by resorting to whataboutism and finger pointing and 'but america/Ukraine/the west...': you must address russia's dishonesty directly.

> that just makes you a russophobe

does it though? That doesn't seem to actually be the case.

indeed, calling the world's totally normal reaction to russia's history of dishonesty "russophobia" seems a little defensive and russophilic

Speaking of the U.N. votes.

Only two countries voted against the Russia-proposed resolution condemning rehabilitation of nazism. Can you guess which countries? Right. The Ukraine and the US.

> Only two countries voted against the Russia-proposed resolution condemning rehabilitation of Nazism.

51 in the most recent iteration of Russia’s annual hollow ritual, that has gotten extra hollow as it has become the main current implementor of exactly the things for which the Nazis are generally condemned, from aggressive war to genocide:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/11/09/w...

"annual hollow ritual"

What exactly makes it hollow?

"to genocide"

Now this was hollow. Or do you call war crimes perpetrated in Afghanistan by the US and its allies [0][1] a genocide too?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brereton_Report [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_Afghanistan#NATO...

Even more whataboutism

to get back on topic: russian soldiers have been found by UN war crimes investigators to have raped, tortured, and murdered men, women, and children as young as 4, in areas of Ukraine russia controls[0]

(this child rape by russians is in addition to genociding Ukrainians in general -- and I'm not referring to russian deportation of Crimean Tatars [1], or russian killing of millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor [2])

[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-troops-raped-tort...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

"children as young as 4"

This reminds me of something [0].

"In her testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, remove the incubators and leave the babies to die."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

> What exactly makes it hollow?

The fact that it is nonbinding resolution ritually offered every year, connected to no substantive action.

> Or do you call war crimes perpetrated in Afghanistan by the US and its allies a genocide too?

No, because “genocide” has a definition, and its not synonymous with the broader category of “war crimes”. Attempts to destroy a people as a people, as Russia is fairly overtly doing in Ukraine (accompanied by propaganda, as such efforts often are, denying that the identity sought to be destroyed is legitimate) is genocide. Other war crimes – which Russia is also committing Ukraine – are, well, other war crimes.

"“genocide” has a definition"

That's a good starting point.

"Attempts to destroy a people as a people, as Russia is fairly overtly doing in Ukraine"

Here is the definition [0]. Now what Russian actions fit it?

[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

"it is nonbinding resolution"

All General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding. Including all of them that condemn the war in the Ukraine.

"ritually"

That's your perception.

"connected to no substantive action"

You might ask Ukraine why doesn't it follow the resolution and doesn't take any actions to stop rehabilitating Nazi collaborators. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36175047

hmm this isn't the entire story, >50 Nations voted against it this year and Canada and the US have consistently voted against it for 10 years.

> Only two countries voted against the Russia-proposed resolution condemning rehabilitation of nazism. Can you guess which countries? Right. The Ukraine and the US.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2022/11/09/w...

>> Canada and the United States (the only country to have consistently voted against these resolutions for the past 10 years) justified their opposition to this draft resolution, believing that it aimed to "legitimize a discourse based on disinformation."

"50 Nations voted against it this year"

If you support with money and weapons a country which renamed dozens of streets to glorify Nazi collaborators, why would you vote for the resolution condemning rehabilitation of Nazism?

There are almost 20 streets named after Bandera, the leader of OUN-B, in the Ukraine [0], including a big one in the center of the Ukraine's capital. Ukraine's ambassador to Germany compared him to Robin Hood [1].

Here is what two countries that now support Ukraine used to say before the war[2][3].

"Last week, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Lion, and his Polish counterpart Bartosz Cichocki wrote officials an open letter condemning the government-sponsored honoring of Stepan Bandera and Andryi Melnyk, two collaborators with the Third Reich.

The two have written on the subject before. In 2018, Lion wrote that he was shocked at an earlier act of veneration for Bandera, saying: “I cannot understand how the glorification of those directly involved in horrible anti-Semitic crimes helps fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia.”

...

Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel has told Jerusalem to butt out of the debate about honoring of Nazi collaborators."

"Israel and Poland, which have clashed repeatedly in recent years over differing interpretations of the history of the Second World War, came together on Thursday to issue a rare joint condemnation of Ukraine over its efforts to rehabilitate nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis.

The criticism came one day after Ukrainians marked the 111th birthday of Stepan Bandera, the wartime leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a violently anti-Semitic organization that collaborated with the Nazis. Among Holocaust historians, the consensus is that the OUN and its military offshoot, known as the UPA, were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews and up to 100,000 Poles during the war (estimates vary)."

[0] https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Категорія:Вулиці_Степана_Банде...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ukraine-hasbetter-he...

[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-tells-israel-to-stay-o...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=gdy&next=35753394

Canada and the US have consistently voted against it for over a decades or such at this point as well.

> If you support with money and weapons a country which renamed dozens of streets to glorify Nazi collaborators, why would you vote for the resolution condemning rehabilitation of Nazism?

Because the is more about Russia using its place within these organisations to try and further its own goals and justify its brutal invasion of Ukraine more then trying to combat Nazism.

I mean, the irony isn't lost on me here that Russia, a country who's main PMC force in Ukraine and abroad is named after Hitlers favourite composer, and whose leader has SS lightning bolts tattooed on his lapel is pushing a UN resolution to "combat Nazism".

"Because the is more about Russia"

So that's why West is ok with rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators in the EU/NATO candidate country. Got it.

"the irony isn't lost on me"

So your line is that Russia has Nazis too so Nazis are fine? Or what?

[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-row-over-holocaust-history-...

more whataboutism, unsurprising.

speaking of UN votes:

fewer than 3% of countries, representing fewer than 3% of people in the world, were willing to go on record saying they trust russia's claims and excuses when they said the same thing

can you guess who they were?

hint: one was russia

"Russophobia - The dislike of getting your country invaded by Russia" [0]

[0] - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Russophobia

Funny. Now try that with antisemitism.

It's interesting how the propaganda story about "intercepted" Kinzhals is being spread together with the official US confirmation of "minor" damage to the Patriot system. Also we have videos which show explosions happening on the ground level (https://www.bitchute.com/video/paRpPOE15Gx4/ 0:33 and 0:42). Even if you believe in the debris story, it means that a rocket got in the range of ~100 meters of the system, which is already can be read as an interception failure for a Patriot-like system.

Of course, the Russian story of "destroying" the Patriot battery is also clearly exaggerated. It's quite probable that the most visible and easily targeted radar module got destroyed, while the rest of the system is fully intact or got hit lightly by debris.

If you destroy a ballistic missile, the debris will mostly remain on a ballistic trajectory, raining down on what would have been the target.

There's no reason to believe that the radar got destroyed at all. The explosions on the ground were confirmed to be hits on the airport terminal (aftermath pictures are available). Obviously, no part of a Patriot system likely to be inside a building.

Last I heard though, those hits were caused by normal Kalibr cruise missiles. It is a bit concerning that those got through, hopefully they learn from it. But not surprising, because it is challenging for a radar to search for objects both above it and at ground level around it simultaneously.

Apparently the Patriot system that got hit only suffered minor damage and is repaired and back up and running now. I wonder if it was perhaps hit by some debris? But it is hard to speculate through the fog of war.

We really don’t know enough about that incident to draw any conclusions from it. Russians said the Patriot was destroyed by their missile, US said it was minor damage from debris and was operational again within 24 hours. I’m sure at some point we’ll know what happened, but not for quite a while.

Unless the Ukrainians deployed everything in the same area and very close together, I don't see how one or two missiles could destroy a Patriot. Unlike planes or tanks, the system is modular and made of different parts (launchers, radars, etc) that - as far as I understand - are supposed to be spread around.

These were short range ballistic and cruise missiles, which are an entirely different category of threats compared to ICBM delivery vehicles. The difference between Mach 5 and Mach 23 is significant for interceptors, obviously. Patriot is not able to intercept ICBM warheads for that reason.

> Patriot battery fired 32 missiles against incoming targets[1], but got hit nonetheless

This phrasing suggests that the only objective that Patriot had was to defend itself, which it failed. However, Patriot system in question was also tasked with defending a lot of critical objects in Kiyv, all of which have not been hit.

Any system can be saturated and overrun. To make an honest assessment, we need to know exactly how many Patriot systems were on the ground, and how many targets were they tasked to protect.

The Patriot certainly is defending some potential target, however it also requires systems to protect the Patriot itself from various kinds of weapons. Air defence is extremely complex and layered when you have to be able to intercept 15000$ drones flying at 150km/h, subsonic cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and gliding bombs of various types and speed, and super/hypersonic cruise missiles.

Two points:

- The Patriot system is modular, there are pictures of the different parts on Wikipedia[0]. When Russia says they've destroyed a Patriot, what exactly have they hit? The radar? A launcher? Hitting one component of the system is not exactly the same as destroying the whole thing.

- Decoys are used during these attacks. Both Russia[1] and Ukraine[2] use them. Even if no one lies, I assume that the number of targets seen by the defenders will always be higher than the number of missiles launched.

---

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/russia-ukraine-weapons...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-160_MALD#Ukraine

You probably meant Hamas. Hezbollah has much more advanced rocket capabilities and has just much more of them. While Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) rockets can usually be stopped by the Iron Dome, Hezbollah has orders of magnitude more of them and many of them are precise.

A bit of a tangential point, but the problem with Ukrainian situation - is that Ukraine doesn’t fire back to where these rockets came from. Any engagement I can imagine involving NATO would not be constrained to such ridiculous, sad, and unfair asymmetry.

Well, the launch locations aren't static/fixed sites. The Kalibr is generally launched by Russian vessels in the Black Sea, and the Kinzhals are launched by MIG-31s. You could try to strike their airbases, or ports, but that's a non-trivial exercise, even for a major power.

> You could try to strike their airbases, or ports, but that's a non-trivial exercise, even for a major power.

You could also strike the ships, which Ukraine has, but Russia keeps them far enough from Ukraine-held. territory now that that is challenging.

The Gorshkov class frigates are a much tougher nut to crack than the Moskva was. A well orchestrated Harpoon attack might be able to, but Ukraine lacks enough launch platforms (and no aircraft that can safely reach it).

> A bit of a tangential point, but the problem with Ukrainian situation - is that Ukraine doesn’t fire back to where these rockets came from.

The lack of adequate deep strike weapons (and possibly political constraints on the use of some of what they have that is externally sourced) is a real problem for Ukraine, to be sure. Given how badly Russia has been underperforming for its on-paper advantages other areas, I’m tempted to say that the deep strike asymmetry is the main reason Russia is able to continue the war at all.

Ukraine has been using what they have to hit Black Sea Fleet ships and fairly deep bomber bases, but their capacity to do either is limited.

> Any engagement I can imagine involving NATO would not be constrained to such ridiculous, sad, and unfair asymmetry.

That is... something of an understatement, yes.

Richard L Garwin, the author of the first hydrogen bomb design, says that midcourse and terminal missile defense is easily overwhelmed by deployable decoys: https://www.garwin.us/mirror/030605nmdp1.pdf

Also remember what a disaster alot of us-systems were that went untested by real battlefield situations for decades. https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xkgw4/patriot-missile-saudi...

Its clearly a mostly unuseable trade chip of buying projected security for buying weapon exports. Which is okay, but for actual protection, look towards countries who actually use the equipment they have regularly in a warzone against a opponent similar to the expected opponent. Israel, turkey, other middle eastern countries, lots of african and some south american countries come to mind.

Everything else is.. a mixed bag

Unless we have some super duper military technology no one knows about then we can't possibly stop 1000 russian warheads coming down on our heads. but neither can the Russians

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