Ukraine Situation Report: Patriot Missile System’s Arrival Draws Near
Ukraine is one step closer to having at least some parts of its skies protected by Patriot air defense systems.After a little more than three months, the first cadre of 65 Ukrainian air defense troops arrived back in Europe this week after training on Patriot air defense systems at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, according to the Pentagon. Those troops began training on Jan. 15.
“They're integrating with other Ukrainian Air defenders along with donated Patriot air defense equipment from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters Thursday. “Once in Ukraine, the Patriot air defense system will add to Ukraine's layered air defenses to provide protection and shield from Russia's wanton, brutal attacks on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
The training at Fort Sill went "faster than expected," Ryder told reporters earlier this month.
Those troops will then move on to Europe for additional training on the two Patriot systems – one American and one donated by the Germans and Dutch – that will be deployed to Ukraine in the coming weeks, U.S. defense officials told reporters at Fort Sill last week.
Germany had initially promised Ukraine a Patriot system, but both CNN and Politico reported Tuesday that it will consist of components from German and Dutch systems.
Ryder didn’t offer any timeline on when the U.S.-promised MIM-104 Patriot air defense system will arrive in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, he told reporters at the Pentagon that delivery of the Patriot battery will be “expedited.”
But he did not offer specifics.
“So for operations security reasons, I'm not going to get into delivery timelines other than to say we're confident that we'll be able to get the Patriots there on an expedited timeline,” Ryder said. “I'll just leave it at that."
During an interview published by The Associated Press on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said none of the promised systems have yet been delivered.
“We have great decisions about Patriots, but we don’t have them for real,” he told AP.
Ukraine needs 20 Patriot batteries to protect against Russian missiles, and even that may not be enough “as no country in the world was attacked with so many ballistic rockets,” he said.
Zelenskyy added that a European nation sent another air defense system to Ukraine, but it didn’t work and they “had to change it again and again.” He did not name the country.
Though Patriots are “capable of intercepting cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft, it's important to put the Patriot battery in context," a senior U.S. defense official told reporters, including from The War Zone on Dec. 21, the day Zelensky was in Washington D.C. to hear from U.S. President Joe Biden that the Patriots were officially promised to Ukraine.
“For air defense, there is no silver bullet. Our goal is to help Ukraine strengthen a layered integrated approach to air defense that will include Ukraine's own legacy capabilities as well as NATO standard systems. Patriot will complement a range of medium- and short-range air defense capabilities that we have provided and the allies have provided in prior donation packages.”
In addition to the Patriot training, more than 7,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained by U.S. European Command, U.S. Army Europe and the Security Assistance Group Ukraine since Russia launched its all-out war, Ryder said.
By the end of this month, Ryder added, more than 4,000 Ukrainian troops who have been training in two brigades - one on Bradley Fighting Vehicles, the other on Stryker armored vehicles - will have returned to Ukraine after completing combined arms training in Germany.
Additional combined arms training is currently underway at the Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels training areas in Germany, with two motorized infantry battalions consisting of 1,200 Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel, said Ryder.
Operator and maintenance training on donated platforms is also ongoing, he said, “with more than 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers having completed platform training in 40 different programs of instruction on more than 20 systems since April of 2022.”
Training for Ukrainian forces “is an international effort being conducted in partnership with our coalition partners, who are currently training another 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers across 26 different nations,” Ryder said.
Though the training was designed to help Ukrainians become proficient at combined arms maneuvers, Ryder declined to say whether it is geared toward a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“I'm not going to talk about potential future operations,” he said. “I'm not gonna talk about timelines.”
Before we dive into the latest updates from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can get caught up on our previous rolling coverage here.
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