Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Ryuu96]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Ryuu96 said:

Putin is now sending his minions into banzai attacks on Ukrainian positions on motorcycles. We've already had golf carts, I'll be waiting for the first reports of bicycle assaults. pic.twitter.com/2yCLu87UNg

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) April 10, 2024

❗Some big news on Patriot production this morning.

Thomas Laliberty, President of Raytheon Land & Air Defense Systems says that they have the capacity to build 1 Patriot battery per month! This is currently underutilized though, as they only have Switzerland's order of 5… pic.twitter.com/5MwsQJscje

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) April 9, 2024

Forgot to add that we don't know what Mitsubishi's production capacity is. We're hoping that it will increase though. https://t.co/9PrO2OgITt

— Colby Badhwar 🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@ColbyBadhwar) April 9, 2024

Thomas Laliberty, President of Raytheon Land & Air Defense Systems says that they have the capacity to build 1 Patriot battery per month! This is currently underutilized though, as they only have Switzerland's order of 5 batteries in production right now, plus some replacement contracts for the assets transferred to Ukraine. They expect another 12 batteries will be on contract within the next 18 months though. It's astounding that the Biden Admin did not use any USAI funds to take advantage of this spare capacity by placing orders for additional Patriot batteries for Ukraine.

On missile production:

PAC-3 MSE is currently at 500/year, and will reach 650 by 2027.

And we finally learn what the rate for PAC-2 GEM-T is; 240/year, reaching 420/year in 2027. GEM-T is only in production for Foreign Military Sales customers. Raytheon currently has 500 GEM-T missiles on contract for production at their US facilities, plus 1000 missiles which will be built by their COMLOG joint venture with MBDA Germany. Raytheon expects another 1000 GEM-T orders on top of those 1500.

So at best in 2027 they will produce 1000 Patriot missiles per year by 2027. That's nowhere near enough for the defense of Ukraine, I hope other systems, like Iris-T and Hawk, can supplement enough missiles for the defense of the Ukrainian air space.

Like I said before, Patriot needs to be layered with other AD systems, Patriot is the only system capable of taking out certain missiles, it won't be taking out every single missile that is fired into Ukraine so I don't really agree that 1000 per year won't be enough, especially "nowhere near" because Patriot isn't intended to be the only AD in Ukraine, it's just the best AD in Ukraine. Hundreds of missiles per year is more than enough, if layered with other AD systems, if Western countries at zero risk don't horde missiles for themselves and if Western countries send their current stocks of missiles.