The United States and Germany have announced that they will send tanks and a Patriot missile defense system to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion.
The stateoftheart equipment is designed to neutralize various types of aerial threats, such as B. various types of missiles, airplanes and larger drones, and has been used in Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, among others.
What is Patriot?
- It was founded in the early ’60s but didn’t get its name and current form until a decade later;
- It is made by the huge North American defense giant Raytheon;
- Its system has been updated several times and the manufacturer guarantees that it plans to incorporate new technical developments into the system until at least 2048;
- Its radar can track up to 50 targets and attack five of them at once. The system covers a distance of around 68 kilometers;
- Depending on the version used, interceptor missiles can reach a height of over two kilometers and hit targets up to 160 kilometers away;
- They have fully mobile missile batteries that include a command center, a radar station for detecting threats, and launchers.
- According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, each unit requires about 90 soldiers to operate;
- According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the current interceptor missile for the system costs about US$4 million (about R$20 million) per battery, and the launchers cost about US$10 million (BRL52 million) each.
How can the Patriot system help Ukraine? The missile defense system is designed to strengthen the European country’s defenses against Russian attacks.
The resource comes to Ukraine after the country asked Western countries for more sophisticated air defense systems to protect its civilian power infrastructure from Russian attacks.
To date, the Ukrainians have deployed various shortrange air defense systems such as the Russianmade Buks and S300, older American missiles such as the Hawk, as well as modern SAM systems such as NASAMS.