Per the New York Times, the newly announced Patriot Air Defense Battery will come directly from Poland, where it was protecting U.S. troops that were deployed there, but who are rotating out of the region. What's important about that development is that due to the proximity to Ukraine, the battery is expected to arrive in Ukraine in the coming days. The surge of Western air defense to the region is not coincidental. Ukraine's first F-16s are slated to arrive in the next 3-4 weeks and layered air defense will be extremely important to protecting them on the ground.A couple Patriot updates today:
- Biden has approved the transfer of an additional Patriot system for Ukraine, according to the NYT
- Scholz announced the transfer of Germany's 3rd Patriot system to Ukraine in the coming weeks
- On April 17, Netherlands' Mark Rutte's announced that he is looking to compile a Patriot system for Ukraine together with other countries. Today Rutte announced that NL will provide "a radar and three launch systems for this purpose"
Ukraine would be really smart to reach out to Israel and buy the PAC 2 Patriot systems (and corresponding missiles) that Israel is retiring in the next couple months. They'd be extremely helpful for Ukraine and Israel could use the funds to buy more of their new air defense platforms.
Ukraine will have the following tier 1 air defense systems by the end of June:
2x PAC 3 Patriot Batteries
3x PAC 2 Patriot Batteries
1x PAC 2 Battery
1x SAMP/T Battery
1x SAMP/T Battery
Note: the Battery being assembled by the Netherlands with components from Germany, Romania and Sweden has not been formally announced. It's in the works, but not all countries have agreed on a delivery timeline yet.
Ukraine said that they needed 7 Patriot Batteries (or equivalent) to defend the country. 5 to operate in fixed locations and two that could roam closer to the front, threatening Russian CAS and ambushing aircraft like they did the Russian AWACS earlier this year. Ukraine will soon have 8 tier 1 batteries at its disposal and both Germany and USA have invested in hundreds of missiles that will arrive in Ukraine over the next year. PAC 3 MSE in the USA and PAC 2 GEM-T missiles in Germany and Japan are at full rate production and production expansion is ongoing.
Ukraine's air defense is slowly, but surely, starting to become really dense and layered. By mid 2025 Ukraine is expected to have the following.
Long Range (Tier 1)
2x Patriot PAC 3 Battery
4x Patriot PAC 2 Battery
2x SAMP/T Battery
Medium Range (Tier 2)
12x IRIS-T SLM Battery
15x NASAMS Battery
6+ HAWK Batteries
2x Crotale NG Batteries
2x Spada Systems
Short Range (Tier 3)
12x IRIS-T SLS
4x Skynex
85x Gepard / Cheetah
30+ FrankenSAM
14x Vampire (Counter UAV)
12x Avenger (Stinger based)
1x Terrahawk Paladin Britain
6+ Supacat (ASRAAM based)
4+ Stormer (Starstreak based)
6+ RBS-70
Note: Ukraine will also continue to field what's left of its Soviet air defense systems, as well as those donated by the likes of Poland , Czech Republic and Slovakia . It's hard to quantify how many of those systems are currently in use, however, and it's even harder to determine how many missiles they have left for those non-Western systems.