I’ve heard stories about how good they are and other stories about how bad they are. So who knows the truth?
Unfotunately the pilot of the Ukrainian F-16 shot down isn’t around to offer his opinion on their effectiveness.
2 Likes
From what I’ve read, the Patriot Missle Syatem like many technically outstanding weapons has it’s effectiveness ultimately determined by quality of crew training, good communications & leadership.
3 Likes
The “bad” stories are mainly from the Gulf War where the targets were tactical ballistic missiles over urban areas, not the aircraft near the battle area the Patriot missiles designed to destroy. The system conducted successful intercepts, but the proximity-fuzed, blast-fragmentation warhead that would be lethal to an aircraft without a direct hit did not destroy the tactical ballistic missile’s unitary HE warhead nor cause the large missile fuselage to disintegrate, both of which caused heavy damage on impact in built-up areas. Hence, “The Patriot didn’t work!”
The current missiles are designed to hit-to-kill, specifically to address the tactical ballistic missile threat.
KL
1 Like
Isn’t Israel’s “Iron Dome” basically the same tech?
1 Like
They both have radar, solid fuel propulsion, and computer guidance. Beyond that, no.
KL
1 Like
No they aren’t at all. But the upgrades made to the Patriots was developed by Israel.
Here is audio from a Sukhoi SU-34 avoiding Patriots.
Su-34 vs Patriot Engagement Audio Breakdown! (youtube.com)
The US avoid batteries as well.
It’s important to keep in mind that systems like Patriot are continuously upgraded with both new hardware and software. The system has been deployed operationally since 1984 - that’s 40 years! The Patriot system of the Gulf War (1990-91) is not even close to the Patriot system of today.
These sorts of discussions often devolve into comparisons of “apples to oranges” with technical or operational data that’s not applicable being used to assess performance of systems that have almost nothing in common with each other. Using 40-year-old information to assess the performance of the current system probably doesn’t reveal the present capability.
Other aspects that’re often overlooked are the industrial and economic foundations of the system in question. These aspects impact the ability to field and sustain in operation the system, and when looking at systems that are deployed with different armies around the world the industrial and economic foundations of that underpin those deployments are non-trivial.
5 Likes
I don’t believe that the US Patriot SAMs are as good and effective as the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) “Arrow,” “Iron Dome,” and “David Sling” SAM family in which the US builds parts for them. The IDF SAMs are so fast that they reportedly can down ballistic and perhaps even hypersonic missiles. Patriots are much slower and can’t do that, but the US Army as invested so much into Patriots that it upgrades them. The IDF has built a high, medium, and low SAM family whereas the US Army has THAAD (high), Patriot (medium), and “Iron Dome” (low) SAM family but is still behind IDF SAM performance.
That said, the US Army is upgrading its radars to “military-grade gallium nitride, or GaN – which strengthens the radar signal and enhances its sensitivity for longer range, higher resolution and increased capacity.”–RTX Raytheon.
These new Army radars are state-of-the-art and advanced. Unlike the older Patriot radar that mainly stare straight ahead, these new RTX radars offer 360-degree coverage and are faster, more sensitive, and can detect threats at longer ranges. That also means that the SAM can turn 180-degrees and attack behind it whereas it cannot do with the older Patriot radar.
Current Patriot radar that mainly stares ahead. It can’t rotate. Photo by Military Review.
New RTX Raytheon “GhostEye” MR 360-degree rotating radar. This one can rotate.
New RTX Raytheon Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensors, or LTAMDS 360-degree radar. This one has AESA radar panels front and back. It don’t know if it can rotate, but it stares 360-degrees around.
I don’t know if these will ever become model kits anytime soon due to the sensitive secret nature of US advanced AESA radars, I don’t think any foreigner can get close to them to photograph for copying and scale model reproduction.
2 Likes
Isn’t Israel’s “Iron Dome” basically the same tech?
The “Iron Dome” is a counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) system that is cheaper, lighter, more plentiful, and meant for other purposes, mainly to intercept incoming artillery and drones on friendly troops. “Iron Dome” has a range of about 43+ miles (70 km). It isn’t really meant to intercept supersonic aircraft but can intercept slower drones, cruise missiles, and rotorcraft.
Patriot is a SAM for air defense and is meant to intercept high-speed aircraft, rotorcraft, and certain kinds of high-speed ballistic and cruise missiles. Due to miniaturization technology and smaller microchips, what was once four Patriots in a launch box can now be 16 because the Patriot SAM has gotten narrower, but there are other wider versions of Patriot SAMs too so that’s not always the case. A mix-in-match of Patriots might be needed for effective air defense coverage. Patriot isn’t “Iron Dome” in that if you use Patriots to counter incoming artillery and drones, the launch box will quickly run out of missiles, and Patriots are indeed expensive to fire.
“Iron Dome” uses the GhostEye MR radar or USMC’s G/ATOR rotating radar since the incoming are smaller and closer so the radar can be more compact and transportable. Patriot requires the larger RTX Lower-tier 360-degree AESA radar for faster and higher altitude targets.
Photo from COTS Journal shows 16 Patriots in a launcher
Photo from Business Insider. Note the combo of 6 smaller Patriots and 2 larger Patriots.
US Army’s “Iron Dome” (or USMC’s “Medium Range Intercept Capability” = MRIC) has 20 SAMs in a launcher, 5 rows x 4 deep = 20. “Iron Dome” uses a battery of three or four launch boxes = 60 to 80 SAMs.
Photo from Defense.gov
3 Likes
patriot-air-defence-system-intercepted-25-kinzhal-missiles-in-ukraine
In some circumstances the Patriot appears to be capable of intercepting and destroying Kinzhal hypersonic missles. These are of course crappy Russian hypersonics that aren’t capable of much maneuvering to avoid interception.
Note it isn’t absolutely necessary for the interceptor missile to be faster than the target missile if the interceptor launcher launcher is positioned in frontal arc of the target missile’s flight path. It is of course more difficult than when the interceptor missle has a speed advantage.
The air defense systems that appear to be major failures are the Russian SA-300 & SA-400. These things are so inept they are routinely blown to bits because they can’t even defend themselves.
1 Like
It doesn’t need to. Just from looking at it, you can tell it’s a phased-array radar, so even though the plate with the circular antenna array (it’s not a single antenna) is fixed, the beam can be aimed anywhere in a cone in front of the plate by “triggering” the antennas at slightly different times. This animation shows how that works:
(source)
Each of the antennas emits a pulse that expands spherically from the antenna, but together they form a larger wavefront that moves diagonally relative to the array.
I don’t know how advanced the Patriot’s radar system is, but chances are that it can aim different parts of the array at separate targets, too, so one radar can track multiple aircraft.
2 Likes
When you think about it, the original M-16’s and AK-47’s were terrible and then were improved. Same with the original Corvette sports cars-the originals were mediocre but in a couple of years were greatly improved.
The original M16 was a poor weapon largely because of meddling by the powers that be, though (principally by switching to a much dirtier propellant and exacerbating it by saying the rifle was self-cleaning). Early AKs were poor because of using technology that the Soviet Union hadn’t properly mastered yet (making the receivers from stamped steel instead of milling them from a solid block).
3 Likes
I just learned that the RTX Lower-tier radar isn’t a rotator either, but I think it can angle itself towards the threat. 360-degree coverage is performed via three AESA radar panels.
The Patriot phased-array radar might not be able to have the SAM attack to the side or behind it due to radar blind spots, and in this dynamic and fluid aerial threat environment, that may be a severe battlefield limitation unless the trailer is moved and then oriented in the direction of the new threat.
The original Patriot missile had a range of 100 km or so, the current one around 120 km. If you’re having to shoot them at targets flying past the missile site, I’d think those targets are too close anyway and best left to shorter-range air defence nearby. Or to the next Patriot battery to your rear.
1 Like
@Trisaw Peter, when thinking of the Patriot capability, please consider the following stories from back in the 1970’s & 1980’s regarding the US Navy’s then new Aegis system. I think it helps puts what’s said in public about current Patriot capabilities into prespective.
Back in the day, there was a lot of negative hype about new very expensive BILLION dollar Aegis system crusiers spread by the media. They didn’t bother to get the context correct because there wouldn’t have been a story if they had.
-
Media quoted a US Admiral saying he’d turn off Aegis because the powerful radar signals gave away task force location. So according to the idiots in the media the system wasn’t useable in warzone. This ignored the fact if the enemy engaged an Aegis equiped task force the enemy obviously already knew where the task force was located. It was a red herring of sorts.
-
The Intel 8080 chip (or whatever chip was used) architecture from the early 1970’s was already obsolete by the time Aegis was deployed so the system was worthless. The media dolts didn’t mention or consider that this was something that could be updated without too much hassle.
-
Media morons said Aegis couldn’t do multiplex tracking and target engagement. When that proved inaccurate, the media maggots claimed Aegis could only track a mere fifty targets at once. Getting the story wrong yet again they revised that to one hundred then corrected the revision to two hundred targets. Now this was unacceptable because Aegis looked useful so the media told yet another inaccurate story that Aegis could only track targets in one small arc at a time. In other words, if one missle approached from the port side of the ship and one missle approached from the starboard side of the ship, then the ship couldn’t engage both targets because only one area of threat could be addressed. In time, that bit of media misinformation was corrected.
Of course, it’s very possible all of that misinformation was being deliberately provided to the US public by the media to fool the USSR about Aegis’s actual capabilities during the Cold War…
1 Like