Germany Spending $5 Billion to Buy Patriot Air Defences For Ukraine
North America, Western Europe and Oceania , Missile and Space
German Major General Christian Freuding has revealed that Berlin is poised to conclude a major defence procurement agreement with the United States to acquire two MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence systems for delivery to Ukraine. The deal is reportedly set to be finalised during an official visit by German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius to the United States, and follows a growing reluctance by Washington to finance transfers of the system to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. U.S. President Donald Trump recently stated that the Patriot system is “very rare… [and] very expensive.”“We’re gonna have to take a look” at the Ukrainian request, the president added, noting that “it’s a shame that we have to spend so much money” on supporting Kiev. The Patriot represents the most high value military asset in Ukrainian service, with each system costing approximately $2.5 billion dollars. The extreme depletion of Ukraine’s previously very large Soviet arsenals of S-300 and BuK air defence systems has forced it to rely on Patriots delivered as aid from across the Western world.
Patriot systems delivered to Ukraine have suffered high combat attrition rates, with the Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile system having been singled out in Ukrainian Air Force reports for its ability to evade interception by the system. Iskander strikes have been confirmed by video footage to have destroyed Patriot batteries, radars and command vehicles multiple times. The Russian ballistic missile was first confirmed to have successfully destroyed a Patriot system on February 23, 2024, with a subsequent strike destroying another system near the Sergeevka locality the following month. New footage in July 2024 confirmed the destruction of two batteries in the Odessa region. On August 11 three more batteries and an AN/MPQ-65 radar were reported destroyed in Iskander-M strikes. One of the Iskander-M’s more recent successes saw the destruction of the Patriot’s AN/MPQ-65 multifunctional radar station, combat control cabin, and missile launch vehicles in the Dnepropetrovsk region. While Western supplies of Patriot systems have dwindled, the availability of Iskander-M systems has grown considerably due to successes by the Russian defence sector in surging production.
Ukrainian officials in May reported that the United States was not expected to provide further Patriot systems as aid. The U.S. “will not give it away for free,” but could sell systems to Ukraine either for hard currency or for concessions. “They think like business people. If I give you something, you have to give me something in return,” one official informed the Washington Post. Several European states including Germany have donated much larger portions of their Patriot missile arsenals to Ukraine than the U.S. had been willing to, with the German arsenal having been effectively exhausted. In April 2024 German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock confirmed regarding her country’s capacity: “Unfortunately, the stocks, especially our own Patriot systems, are now pretty much exhausted. Therefore I made it clear at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting that we need to check the availability of all Patriot systems in Europe and globally, and that we will make every effort to obtain these systems for Ukraine.”
Germany and the Netherlands were the first European countries to supply Patriot systems to Ukraine in early 2023. Despite Germany showing a willingness to to invest in financing new Patriot systems, the cost effectiveness of such procurements has been widely questioned, as not only have the systems demonstrated serious limitations and vulnerability, but they are unlikely to be delivered in time to stall Russia’s current major advances.
Russia's major advances are really in tens of feet per day, at enormous cost in blood and materiel.
ReplyDeleteHeil to Friedrich Merz.
Achtung !
US curtently only has 25% of all Patriot missile interceptors needed for Pentagon’s military plans. Raydeon can only produces 600 Patriot missiles per year. Replenishing the stocks of these weapons is neither easy nor cheap. They are highly sophisticated and require a long lead time for production and cost nearly $4 million a piece, according to the Army’s Fiscal Year 2026 Justification Book.
ReplyDeleteThus, for $5B, Germany can get 1250 Patriot missiles in slightly not than 2yrs if Raydeon supplies am its yearly production to the German. This is highly unlikely especially the zionist state has 1st preference in getting these missiles. So Ukraine could possibly get these missiles almost piecemeal over 3+yrs.
Similarly, In March, the Pommie announced a historic £1.6 billion deal to provide more than five thousand air defence missiles for Ukraine. It would take yes for MBDA to meet the demand.
By then, where is Ukraine?