Biden scrambling to beef-up Ukraine’s air defence with longer-range missile batteries

Joe Biden has vowed to help Ukraine get longer-range air defence systems, but finding the powerful anti-missile batteries needed is proving tricky.

Joe Biden has promised to help Ukraine get air defence systems with a longer range than the shoulder-borne Stinger missiles already on the ground, but finding the powerful anti-missile batteries Ukraine’s military so urgently needs is proving easier said than done.

The US President, who wants to support Ukraine militarily without entering into direct conflict with Russia, is seeking to provide better defences against the Russian artillery that is pounding its cities.

The ideal armament to do that would be mobile anti-aircraft batteries of the Patriot type, whose effectiveness has been amply demonstrated in recent years in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

Still unclear is whether the Patriot system could provide an effective defence against the latest missiles in the Russian arsenal.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Saturday that a day earlier it had used, for the first time, its hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles to destroy an underground arms depot in western Ukraine.

The US-made Patriot, loaded on to trucks, has a radar capable of automatically detecting and intercepting an aircraft, drone or missile within a radius of more than 100km. It has a surveillance post manned by three soldiers and a battery of interceptor missiles.

But hypersonic missiles fly far faster than traditional cruise missiles. Ukraine’s army, moreover, is not at present trained to handle the sophisticated US Patriot system.

On the other hand, it knows how to handle the S-300 anti-aircraft system, a first-generation Russian competitor to the US Patriot, whose range is more limited but which would be sufficient to protect Kharkiv or Kyiv, two cities close to the Russian border, from which most of the missiles pounding them are fired.

Patriot anti-missile missiles could be a key to giving Ukraine better air defence. Pictur: AFP

These S-300s could come from former Soviet bloc countries that still deploy them, in particular Slovakia and Bulgaria, where US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has been visiting in recent days.

But those countries still depend on the S-300 for their own security and are demanding a substitute – in other words, Patriots – before giving them to Ukraine.

“We’re willing to do so immediately when we have a proper replacement,” Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad said during a meeting with Mr Austin in Bratislava.

On Friday, The Netherlands said it would deploy a Patriot battery to the Sliac military base in central Slovakia, and Germany confirmed it would send two more batteries to the country, which could facilitate the transfer of Slovakia’s only S-300 battery to Ukraine. But the German and Dutch Patriots will not arrive in Slovakia until April 15 at the earliest – and time is running out for the Ukrainian army.

While several countries may be ready to supply Kyiv with spare missiles for the S-300, Ukraine needs a lot of complete systems, including radars and monitoring stations. “One S-300 is better than none,” said Brent Eastwood, defence editor at 1945, a foreign policy web magazine. “But it’s still not enough.”

Ukraine had around 100 S-300 batteries before Vladimir Putin launched his invasion last month, and the Russian army claims to have destroyed about 40 at the very outset of the war on February 24. The country is vast, and just protecting a city takes a lot, Eastwood said. “If I were a war planner for Ukraine, I would want four S-300 batteries for each quadrant of Kyiv. This deployment would make me sleep better at night.”

One other NATO country, Greece, has S-300s, but it, too, will need to be offered replacements. However, even if the Pentagon, whose Patriot inventory is relatively limited, decides to lend its Patriots to these countries, it will take several weeks for them to reach their destination.

Washington is trying to convince allies in other regions to lend theirs. US Chief of Staff General Mark Milley may have asked Japan for help on Thursday after a phone call to his Japanese counterpart.

The Gulf countries have anti-aircraft batteries to protect themselves from Iranian missiles, but they do not seem in a hurry to come to the aid of Ukraine. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among the world’s biggest crude exporters and both with strong ties to the West and to Moscow, have so far avoided taking any stance against Russia.

AFP