It was going to happen sooner or later but I think we can all celebrate what those Patriot systems accomplished in their time in Ukraine. They’ve proven how valuable Patriot AA are in the fight so now it’s time to get the numbers up over there and send more.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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I've red patriot is a "billion dollar system". Losing these hurts a lot. I don't know if Germany has a lot of these launchers. The mobile launchers are from Germany I believe.
Patriot is billion dollar system, but that's entire system with the destroyed launcher being the cheaper part. (IIRC there are 6 launchers in single system)
The main issue is that there's limited amount of the mobile launchers available as Patriot was built primarily as static AA defense.
Correct. MAN is a German company that makes trucks & busses and unlike the US, Germany has truck mounted Patriots. This was long speculated to be the tactic Ukraine used for those ambushes, so unfortunately I would suspect this loss to be true and probably harder to replace.
It is the launcher, that is the cheapest part of the system. The expensive parts are the command center and the radars.
Generally yes but afaik only Germany has those truck mounted launchers.
If the launcher is not moving in the video, stay sus. Ukraine has a lot of himars/patriot mockups to lure these strikes in👍
No, sorry. This is way too big of an explosion of a mock up, and I don't think they'd park a mock up in the middle of the road either. It was long speculated that Ukraine uses the German Patriot system for those ambushes, since they're truck mounted, and this would definitely confirm it. So to me it seems pretty likely that it is indeed true. Ukraine moved it close to the front for ambushes and then got sloppy in keeping it save.
Sloppy? It is war, shit unfortunately happens.
Many explanations why, but the Ukranians knew the risks and this is what they ended up doing with the equipment. No use armchair generating this. We all share the disappointment of the loss, in crew and also the equipment.
And probably the Russians had Iskanders on standby just for this hunt, it not only cost them planes, but also serious time and material for the hunt and kill.
Letting Russia's spy drones so far inland to spot such a high value target, giving Russia so much time to actually launch something at the discovered position without moving, AND failing to intercept said something? Yes, that's sloppy when you have such a mobile system with so much various high quality anti-air systems that could protect it from both the spy drone AND the (presumably) missiles they launched at it.
We just don't know..
Keep in mind, Specialised spy drones are hard to intercept. And comparing the normal potato quality footage to this footage, it's probably not just another drone.
The fact they used an Iskander, combined with the drone, this was most likely a dedicated kill team. The launchers could have been spotted by infiltrators, traitors.. dumb luck does seem unlikely due to the rapid response.
Im just going to point out the difference in explosive amounts. Russians used a iskander, those are really big missiles.