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Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why Ukraine remains dependent on US Patriot missiles
A series of Russian ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian cities have killed dozens of civilians in recent weeks, shaking an already uneasy sense of safety for Ukrainians living far from the front lines. The Russian strikes are growing more lethal as foreign air defense aid to Ukraine has dwindled, particularly deliveries of Patriot missiles. Ukraine is left struggling to cover the shortfall. Ukraine's ability to shoot down inbound Russian drones and cruise missiles has grown enormously since Russia's full-scale invasion. But despite ingenuity in domestic weapon production over the past three years, Ukraine has no homemade equivalent to the Patriot, a U.S.-made surface-to-air missile system whose latest iterations are uniquely good at stopping ballistic missiles in flight. Ukraine's local missile makers are working through a long list of demands on their production, while also finding their factories under frequent Russian aerial strikes. Before February 2022, Ukrainian aerospace engineers were reconfiguring their leftover Soviet air defense batteries for the next generation of threats. Like the stocks of Patriot missiles, those systems are also running low on ammunition, and their designers are prioritizing building cruise and ballistic missiles over anti-ballistic air defense missiles. Ukraine is consequently unlikely to field strong anti-ballistic missile defenses of its own any time soon. The only near-term solution to Russia's increasingly aggressive ballistic attacks remains the delivery of more Patriot missiles from allied nations. Ballistic missiles are among the toughest challenges that any air defense system faces. They fly in high parabolas far from the Earth's surface, coming down at several times the speed of sound to strike their targets. Intercepting ballistic missiles in their flight paths requires precision both in detection of incoming missiles and in the launch and targeting of outgoing air defense missiles. Cruise missiles and drones fly slower and nearer to the ground, giving ground-based air defense more time to hit them out of the sky. 'There's a big difference between ballistic missile defense and missile defense targeted at air-breathing threats like drones and cruise missiles,' said Fabian Hoffmann, a missile specialist at the Oslo Nuclear Project. 'Airbreathing' refers to aircraft with jet engines that take in oxygen as they fly at relatively low altitudes. 'For ballistic missile defense, there simply is no shortcut.' Much of the weaponry American arms makers have sent to Ukraine has fallen short on the battlefield. Missile defense systems are a major exception, particularly when it comes to fending off ballistic threats like Russian Kinzhals and Iskanders. 'The Americans mastered that technology because they had to,' said Hoffmann. 'The U.S., after the Cold War, operated under the assumption that it would always have air dominance near where it fought. That means the only credible airborne threat you really have to worry about is standoff munitions like ballistic and cruise missiles.' Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has slowed down air defense aid to Ukraine. The last major shipment of Patriot equipment was the week following Trump's inauguration — 90 missiles redirected from Israel. Another Patriot system from Israel is currently being refurbished after almost a year of back-and-forth, but U.S. standards of 'refurbishment' have famously held up much simpler deliveries like armored vehicles for months. Ukraine guards details about its missile programs in general and air defenses in particular extremely closely. But by the figures available, the situation is growing dire. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte lamented that almost all the Patriots promised to Ukraine were already there as of the middle of April. The Defense Department declined to provide specifics as to remaining Patriot deliveries. A spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent that "the Defense Department continues to provide equipment to Ukraine from previously authorized PDA and USAI packages.' EU countries that had previously shared their Patriots more generously with Ukraine have run through much of their own stockpiles and are now buying up new missiles. Russia has at the same time radically stepped up its own ballistic missile production. While Ukraine claimed Russia was running out of Iskanders early in the war, production has rebounded to 'between 40 and 50 Iskanders per month,' Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, said in December. Russia is launching more of those Iskanders as Ukraine has gotten worse at deflecting them. The numbers reported by the Ukrainian Air Force show a major drop off in the effectiveness of air defense against ballistic missiles in recent months. They tally a total of 22 ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine throughout April, mostly Iskanders. The Air Force reported that air defenses shot down eight, seven of which were in a mass attack on Kyiv, the best-defended city in the country. That attack still saw four missiles touch down, killing 12 civilians and injuring another 87. Other Russian attacks used Iskanders with cluster munitions to kill 20 in Kryvyi Rih on April 4 and 34 in Sumy on April 13. Another strike on Kyiv killed two and injured eight on the night of May 6. The new vulnerability is acutely felt among Ukrainians who had previously relied on stronger protections in cities far from the front. Ukraine is working to shield itself from the increasingly brazen Russian strikes on civilians. President Zelensky is haggling for Patriot systems with money he doesn't have. Ukraine also cannot bootstrap a modern Patriot system or PAC-3 missiles of its own at home. 'Developing SAM (surface-to-air) systems is expensive and time-consuming,' says Michael Duitsman, a missile expert at the Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies. 'SAMs are a system of systems — missiles, launchers, radars, computers, software, user interfaces, etc. Each of those components needs to be developed, prototyped, and tested, and all of them must mesh together and perform reliably against hostile forces in adverse conditions. This can involve years of testing and debugging.' Domestic Ukrainian air defense is dominated by leftover Soviet SAM missile launchers, especially S-200s and S-300s. Post-Soviet Russia upgraded the S-300s to S-400s, which are supposedly better at shooting down ballistic missiles. But an S-500 that, as proposed, more closely resembles the newest Patriots has remained under development for years. Chief of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces Valeriy Gerasimov announced the first S-500 division in December. The only known footage emerged days later. Ukraine was already at work on an S-300 upgrade of its own called the SD-300 before the war. Per a since-removed 2021 flyer from Design Bureau Luch, the envisioned system still had a warhead, meaning it still relies on fragmentary explosions that the newest and best anti-ballistic defenses have moved away from. The physical hardware of these anti-ballistic missiles takes years to build out. But improvements in software, particularly in algorithms predicting the trajectory of incoming ballistic attacks, would be a cheaper way of boosting S-300 effectiveness, as would more imports of advanced radar systems. But Ukraine is also running low on ammunition for its SAMP-T and S-300 systems, as well as Patriots. The factories that would, pre-war, have been best equipped to build out more ammunition or upgrades for these S-300s find themselves prime targets for Russian air attacks. Ukraine is, for now, trapped in a vicious cycle in which it needs air defense to protect the factories where it can build more air defense missiles of its own. They are also the same factories working on Ukraine's own cruise and ballistic missiles — namely the Neptune and Hrim-2 — which have taken priority since the war's outset. Hoffmann, for one, sees domestic anti-ballistic defenses as being far out of range for Ukraine's wartime research and development relative to other, cheaper drone and missile development. 'If the Ukrainians start investing in indigenous BMD (ballistic missile defense), I'll eat my shoe,' said Hoffmann. 'That would not be worth it from an opportunity cost perspective.' Ukraine consequently continues to bank on the West to provide more Patriot missiles. There are two main species of Patriot missiles critical to Ukraine today, PAC-2s and PAC-3s. Raytheon makes Patriot ground systems, launchers, and PAC-2 missiles, which are primarily for shooting down cruise missiles. Lockheed Martin makes the PAC-3 missiles, which are, to all appearances, the best anti-ballistic defense on the international market, particularly the newest Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) models. The Ukrainian Air Force wrote early in April that since the start of the full-scale war, they had shot down 90 ballistic missiles and 40 Kinzhals, classified as 'aeroballistics.' Other air defense units in Ukraine include Soviet S-300s, Norwegian NASAMS, German Iris-Ts, and the French-Italian SAMP/T, the land-based system from Aster, and likely the closest competitor to the newest Patriots. PAC-3s are uniquely designed to 'hit to kill.' Traditional air defense missiles are shot into the sky to explode, sending shrapnel into adjacent incoming planes, drones, or missiles. Hit-to-kill missiles like the PAC-3 destroy their targets by physically flying into them. A deck that Lockheed Martin provided to the Kyiv Independent touts that hit-to-kill attacks are far better at destroying not just the missile, but the explosives or even chemical charges that a missile is carrying. The company also says explosive air defense doesn't change the flight path of ballistic missiles, leaving debris to fall more or less where it was initially heading. In a statement, Lockheed Martin wrote to the Kyiv Independent: 'PAC-3 Hit-to-kill technology encompasses advanced software and hardware components, including the seeker, a highly responsive airframe, agile control system, and guidance software. All components are necessary to achieve hit-to-kill capability.' Without explosives, a PAC-3 is much smaller, lighter, and more maneuverable than a PAC-2. As a result, a standard Patriot launcher can fit 16 PAC-3s at once, as compared to four PAC-2s. The precision targeting technology required for hit-to-kill is new. PAC-3s came under development when PAC-2s largely failed against Iraq's arsenal of Soviet-made SCUD ballistic missiles in the first Gulf War. The embarrassment of those encounters prompted a new design that took a decade and a half to make operational. To date, the U.S. is the only exporter of 'hit-to-kill' technology in the world. China's HQ-19 seems to use something similar, but public information is limited. The Chinese government announced a successful anti-ballistic test in 2022 but has remained quiet about details. Russia, meanwhile, has the same S-300s as Ukraine as well as upgraded S-400s that Ukraine does not have. The Russian defense industry is working on the S-500 but has yet to properly field them. Ukraine can similarly tinker with its stockpiles of S-300s, particularly with updated software and radar systems. But ammunition for those weapons is also running perilously low. The PAC-3 MSEs boast two critical features. One is that they are uniquely effective at shooting down Russian ballistic missiles, as their time in Ukraine has demonstrated. Thanks to this success, countries across Europe and the Middle East are petitioning the U.S. government to buy progressively more, with Germany getting the go-ahead for an unprecedented $5 billion purchase back in August. The second critical feature of PAC-3s is that they are produced en masse, at a scale that is growing thanks to their performance in Ukraine and an increasing number of nations ordering them to defend themselves from ballistic missile attacks. Lockheed Martin is planning to expand production from 500 to 650 annually. Multinational European missile maker MBDA has gotten the go-ahead to build the first manufacturing for Patriots outside of the U.S. New production of Patriot missiles will, however, take years to build out. Largely thanks to their performance in Ukraine, a glut of new Patriot missiles should be going around in two years. Meanwhile, Ukrainian air defense remains largely dependent on foreign donations of missiles, whose supply is stretched thin worldwide. Hi there, this is Kollen, the author of this article. Thanks for reading. Ukrainians' responses to Russia's invasion showcase a society that is deeply resilient and inventive, despite pullbacks in aid. If you like reading stories highlighting the development of Ukraine's wartime technology and economy from on the ground, please consider supporting our work by of the Kyiv Independent. Read also: Ukraine's long-suffering aerospace giants look to Europe to break free from Russian orbit We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
France is sending Ukraine more AASM Hammer bombs — here's what they can do
In a boon for Kyiv's offensive capabilities, France has announced it will manufacture 1,200 AASM Hammer bombs for Ukraine in 2025. Glide bombs have become an integral part of both Russia and Ukraine's arsenals, allowing the delivery of powerful payloads for relatively little cost. The AASM Hammer is one of several modern Western models and has already been used by Ukraine to great effect. "The pilots of the Ukrainian Air Force speak very positively about this weapon," Viktor Kevliuk, a retired military officer and defense expert, told the Kyiv Independent. A glide bomb is a standard air-dropped bomb modified with wings and a navigation system that allows it to be launched from a distance rather than directly over the target. They're far from a new technology and date back to World War II — the German Fritz X bomb was the first of its type, a 1,560 kg armor-piercing bomb fitted with a radio receiver and designed for use against armored ships. Other nations developed their own versions, and they've been used for decades in conflicts, including Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Converting a "dumb bomb," an unguided one, into a smart bomb can cost as little as $20,000, making it a much cheaper alternative to cruise and ballistic missiles that cost millions of dollars to produce. "They're really basic," Fabian Hoffmann, a defense expert and doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, told the Kyiv Independent. "All you need is the glide system that allows the bomb to fly for some distance and then integrate that with a satellite navigation receiver. And that's pretty straightforward," he added. Russia began using glide bombs to devastating effect in Ukraine in early 2023 to compensate for dwindling numbers of smart munitions and used them against cities near the front lines, causing hundreds of civilian deaths in 2024. Russia mainly uses Soviet-era FAB-family bombs, upgraded with a Unified Gliding and Correction Module, which includes wings that flip out as the weapon is released by the aircraft and a satellite navigation system. Despite being one of the most primitive and numerous weapons in the Russian Air Force's arsenal, Ukraine's Western-supplied air defense systems were more geared towards protecting Russia's sophisticated and expensive cruise and ballistic missiles. "Glide bombs, unlike missiles, do not have a propulsion system, so they don't generate much heat and are therefore largely immune to interception by infrared homing missiles, like the AIM-9 Sidewinder, or the FIM-92 Stinger," Jacob Parakilas, research leader in RAND Europe's Defense, Security and Justice Research Group, told the Kyiv Independent earlier this year. The range of the weapons also allows the Russian fighter jets that launch them to stay out of range of Ukraine's advanced air defense systems such as the U.S.-supplied Patriot. Ukraine has instead developed electronic warfare methods to jam the navigation systems of glide bombs, something it has done to great effect in recent months. Ukraine also has glide bombs supplied by Western allies, including the U.S. Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB). These are more accurate and sophisticated than their Russian counterparts, but Ukraine's arsenal is much more limited, and Russian forces have developed their own electronic countermeasures designed to specifically disrupt their accuracy, rendering them largely ineffective. The AASM Hammer (Highly Agile Modular Munition Extended Range) bomb is, in essence, the same as all other glide bombs — wings attached to a dumb bomb and a navigation system. Developed by French company Safran, it has become a weapon of choice for Ukraine's air force thanks to its high accuracy and resistance to Russian electronic warfare, according to Le Parisien. Its GPS navigation system can be enhanced with infrared and laser guidance and is specifically designed to function in "GPS-denied" environments — in other words, it's incredibly difficult to jam. All of this makes them more expensive than the cheapest glide bombs — each unit can cost upwards of $300,000, though they're still cheaper than a Storm Shadow cruise missile (around $1m) for example, and are easier to produce. "The AASM Hammer's extended range and high accuracy make it suitable for targeting logistics hubs, command posts, and high-value assets located beyond the front line," Kevliuk said. Safran has adapted the bomb so that it can be used by Ukrainian MiG and Su aircraft, something it did "in less than four months in the fall of 2023," according to the company's CEO Franck Saudo. The weapon entered service with the French military in 2008 and became standard for the Dassault Rafale, a French twin-engine, multirole fighter aircraft. It has since been adapted for use on other aircraft, including the F-16 and Mirage 2000. France hopes to supply Ukraine with around 50 AASM bombs each month. They have a maximum range of around 70 kilometers, meaning Ukrainian fighter jets typically launch the bombs near the front line. This requires a fast and low approach to avoid Russian radars before banking sharply upwards to provide the bombs with lift. According to Hoffmann, the weapons range is somewhat limited by launching in this way, but once launched, there's very little its target can do, even if it manages to see it coming. "The really nice thing about the munition is that it is quite fast so that makes it difficult to intercept for the Russians as it comes down," he told the Kyiv Independent. "It is also equipped with a fairly large payload, which means that it can penetrate fortified structures, and then as it explodes, it can cause some really significant damage," he added. In recent months, Ukraine's armed forces have released several videos showing strikes on Russian forces using Hammer bombs. They've been used against command posts, warehouses, and heavy artillery, and in February, a group of Russian soldiers sheltering under a road bridge was reportedly wiped out using the weapon. "This is a system for front-line use to really pressure the Russians," Hoffman said. Read also: As Russia trains abducted children for war, Ukraine fights uphill battle to bring them home We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
