Since World War II, Americans have never spent so much on a war. Since last February, Washington’s military aid to Kyiv amounts to 18.6 billion dollars. During President Zelensky’s trip to the United States, additional military aid of $1.85 billion was announced.
This new aid includes, in particular, a Patriot air defense system to help the Ukrainian army counter Russian bombing raids on Kyiv. It is the most emblematic anti-aircraft defense device in the American catalogue. According to the Pentagon, Patriot batteries are capable of shooting down cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and also aircraft much more effectively than systems currently available to the Ukrainian military.
But we will have to wait long after winter. The operator training time, which should take place in Germany, is estimated to be more than 3 months. It takes a year to train the maintenance crews, which must be Ukrainian so that the Americans are not officially considered co-belligerent by Moscow.
Expensive and ineffective against drones
This new donation, however, creates a controversy in the United States in military and political circles. George Beebe, a former US foreign intelligence adviser and now a consultant to the Quincy Institute, doubts the Patriots’ effectiveness in this specific case. According to this expert, it is a “very expensive and ineffective” way to defend against drone attacks.
The US military is well aware of the problem. For years, in the Middle East, it has faced drone attacks against which it has only expensive and ineffective means. To deal with this threat, the Pentagon announced at the beginning of the year a budget of 636 million dollars for the research and development of defense systems against drones that usually cost a few hundred dollars.
According to Jack Watling, a weapons expert at RUSI (Royal United Services Institute), a strategic think tank closely linked to British Defense, the Patriot missiles will be capable of shooting down Iranian Shahed-136 drones.
consequences impossible to foresee
On the political level, the Democratic administration also seems forced to take into account the growing exasperation of the Republican opposition, which considers the budget bill quite exorbitant or demands much stricter control of the use of this aid. Some Republicans have called for an end to this funding and demanded an audit to see how funds already allocated to Ukraine have been used.
In the Kremlin, the announcement to supply the Patriots, of course, was received very coldly. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the new aid “does not bode well for Ukraine.”
According to Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, the US actions in Ukraine represent an escalation whose consequences are impossible to predict, TASS reported. Moscow indicated last week that the Patriot system would be a legitimate target for Russian forces. The ambassador also said that Volodymyr Zelensky’s trip confirmed that US statements that the US did not want a conflict with Russia were nonsense.
But the Patriots’ handover may also have repercussions well beyond Europe. Jack Watling warns that the required quantities of Patriot missiles for Ukraine will “weaken the deterrence posture” against Beijing. According to him, providing these systems to Ukraine will be “at the expense of the Western deterrence stance towards China in the face of its threats to the independence of Taiwan.”
Source: BFM TV
