One of the first items I took note of this morning was this tweet regarding the planned stationing of German Patriots near the Polish - Ukraine border. As you’ll see, the commenter is suggesting that this is a trap for plunging NATO and Russia into a hot WW3 (I think the map is Romanian—the city name is
The Patriot battery to be deployed to Ukraine is likely one of those that the U.S. currently has in Poland. A German Patriot unit will be deployed to replace it.
The phased array radar that Patriot systems use are good but they are also a weakness. They are visible from satellites with Synthetic Aperture Radar. As researchers have found some years ago:
The most modern missiles Patriot system use have a maximum reach of some 60 kilometer (37 miles). One battery can thus cover a bubble with a 120 kilometer diameter. It may be good for Kiev or Odessa but is nothing that will solve the general military problem Ukraine has.
The Russian forces are superior in technology, personnel and fire power. There is no chance, and never has been, for Ukraine to win that match. No Wunderwaffen, British marines with sea drones or U.S. Patriot systems, will change those basic facts.
Ukraine now gets US Patriot missiles that cost the US taxpayer $3 million per missile to shoot down $30,000 Russian drones. The Russians can fire 100 drones for each US Patriot missile. The Pentagon strategists call this ‘unbalancing Russia’.
So, The Germans are going to deploy on the "Polish/Ukrainian border". Russia has now made clear they can attack these things. Let us hope they the put them on the Ukrainian side.
This war can't go on forever, can it? Why not? From Putin's point of view he got a lot more than he bargained for, all of it positive. He can just sit there as the West commits suicide. He has fuel and fertilizer. We don't. This winter will be brutal for Europe, and costly for America. The more we hit Russia with pinpricks, the more intransigent Putin will be. It will be a war of attrition on the economic front, and an embarrassment for America as the media narrative wears thin.
I think in an earlier comment I talked some numbers and demonstrated that stopping a bad day's worth of Russian missile launches would take a year's production of Patriots. Patriot actually works pretty well. A lot of what amounts to propaganda gets pumped out about it, pro and con All I really have time to say here is that you should take anything you read about its actual capabilities with a couple of boxes of Morton's
Patriot was designed to shoot down enemy planes and will do that. (And has proven it can do that by mistakenly shooting down friendly aircraft several times, but that is neither here nor there.) It has some utility as an antimissile weapon, as long you understand that there are certain types of missiles that it can't cope with and that like any antimissile weapon, it can be swamped by numbers. It's good for what it does, as long as you understand what it can and can't do.
If we were going to send these things to Ukraine then the time to do that was months ago because unless we're sending NATO crews to man them, the Russian winter offensive is likely to hit before Patriots can be deployed in any kind of useful numbers and Ukrainian crews can be trained up. I confess to being somewhat bumfoozled here. I simply don't know what these people are doing, and I'm not altogether sure that they know either. I don't think they're planning direct US involvement in the war, but that doesn't mean they can't let things get out of hand.
I wish I could sound more authoritative, but I'm not sure that logic is really going to avail you here. To quote that great military commander The Joker, "No one panics when everything is going according to Plan, even if the Plan is horrifying". Everything is going according to Plan, I suppose, it's just that the Plan has probably gone way off the rails.
I agree that the provisioning of Patriots would be more of a tactic than a strategic move, one intended to provoke a Russian overreaction rather than to achieve any military advantage. However, I'm not sure how much fortification (short of direct and undeniable NATO engagement) the Ukes could put up at this point to bleed Putin's domestic support. With all the gamesmanship and propaganda circling around this conflict, I guess we'll learn quite soon (month or so) whose rope-a-dope is the more effective one. Suspect that we're the ones going to get doped here.
Highly informative:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/12/us-to-send-more-wunderwaffen-to-ukraine.html#more
The Patriot battery to be deployed to Ukraine is likely one of those that the U.S. currently has in Poland. A German Patriot unit will be deployed to replace it.
The phased array radar that Patriot systems use are good but they are also a weakness. They are visible from satellites with Synthetic Aperture Radar. As researchers have found some years ago:
The most modern missiles Patriot system use have a maximum reach of some 60 kilometer (37 miles). One battery can thus cover a bubble with a 120 kilometer diameter. It may be good for Kiev or Odessa but is nothing that will solve the general military problem Ukraine has.
The Russian forces are superior in technology, personnel and fire power. There is no chance, and never has been, for Ukraine to win that match. No Wunderwaffen, British marines with sea drones or U.S. Patriot systems, will change those basic facts.
Kim Dotcom
@KimDotcom
Ukraine now gets US Patriot missiles that cost the US taxpayer $3 million per missile to shoot down $30,000 Russian drones. The Russians can fire 100 drones for each US Patriot missile. The Pentagon strategists call this ‘unbalancing Russia’.
So, The Germans are going to deploy on the "Polish/Ukrainian border". Russia has now made clear they can attack these things. Let us hope they the put them on the Ukrainian side.
Seems like official confirmation of the rumors.
Why is this coming out now?
Royal Marines deployed on ‘high-risk covert operations’ in Ukraine
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a266c5be-7ad6-11ed-8486-22782b7fe87b?shareToken=531bac8ae05f92ddeb9bfd617ed48e2a
This war can't go on forever, can it? Why not? From Putin's point of view he got a lot more than he bargained for, all of it positive. He can just sit there as the West commits suicide. He has fuel and fertilizer. We don't. This winter will be brutal for Europe, and costly for America. The more we hit Russia with pinpricks, the more intransigent Putin will be. It will be a war of attrition on the economic front, and an embarrassment for America as the media narrative wears thin.
I think in an earlier comment I talked some numbers and demonstrated that stopping a bad day's worth of Russian missile launches would take a year's production of Patriots. Patriot actually works pretty well. A lot of what amounts to propaganda gets pumped out about it, pro and con All I really have time to say here is that you should take anything you read about its actual capabilities with a couple of boxes of Morton's
Patriot was designed to shoot down enemy planes and will do that. (And has proven it can do that by mistakenly shooting down friendly aircraft several times, but that is neither here nor there.) It has some utility as an antimissile weapon, as long you understand that there are certain types of missiles that it can't cope with and that like any antimissile weapon, it can be swamped by numbers. It's good for what it does, as long as you understand what it can and can't do.
If we were going to send these things to Ukraine then the time to do that was months ago because unless we're sending NATO crews to man them, the Russian winter offensive is likely to hit before Patriots can be deployed in any kind of useful numbers and Ukrainian crews can be trained up. I confess to being somewhat bumfoozled here. I simply don't know what these people are doing, and I'm not altogether sure that they know either. I don't think they're planning direct US involvement in the war, but that doesn't mean they can't let things get out of hand.
I wish I could sound more authoritative, but I'm not sure that logic is really going to avail you here. To quote that great military commander The Joker, "No one panics when everything is going according to Plan, even if the Plan is horrifying". Everything is going according to Plan, I suppose, it's just that the Plan has probably gone way off the rails.
I agree that the provisioning of Patriots would be more of a tactic than a strategic move, one intended to provoke a Russian overreaction rather than to achieve any military advantage. However, I'm not sure how much fortification (short of direct and undeniable NATO engagement) the Ukes could put up at this point to bleed Putin's domestic support. With all the gamesmanship and propaganda circling around this conflict, I guess we'll learn quite soon (month or so) whose rope-a-dope is the more effective one. Suspect that we're the ones going to get doped here.
I I’d like to know as well. Something like what Wauck speculated is probably true. I smell a rat in all this.