Russia ‘destroys two $400m Patriot surface-to-air missile systems’

Dramatic aerial footage reportedly shows the moment two US-made truck-mounted quad-launchers for the Patriot surface-to-air missile systems are destroyed. A giant explosion followed a strike by a Russian hypersonic Iskander missile.

The Russians have called it the first video-confirmed destruction of the Patriot complex displayed by Ukraine. Each system is believed to cost $400million, while missiles can cost up to $6million each. The hit comes after Ukraine is believed to have deployed the Patriot to down a succession of Russian war planes in recent weeks.

If confirmed – and Russia initially claimed Ukrainian S-300 complexes had been blitzed – the strike is a severe blow to Ukraine.

Ukraine only had five of the Patriot systems before this strike, and each battery, with missiles included, cost around a billion dollars each.

Patriots have been supplied to Ukraine by the US, the Netherlands and Germany. The strike came as the Patriot equipment was being moved near the frontline, seemingly without air cover, near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, according to reports.

The Patriot has been key to Ukraine to defend major cities from incoming strikes but also as an offensive weapon to blow Putin’s warplanes out of the sky. The system has proved effective against the hypersonic Iskander missile, but it was an Iskander that hit the Patriot complex and its support vehicles here.

Loyalist pro-war channel Military Informant called it ‘the first confirmation of the destruction of two American MIM-104 Patriot air defence systems’.

It appears a Russian military drone had spotted the Patriot movement and relayed the data to enable the clinical Iskander targeting.

Russian state news agency TASS claimed that three launchers may have been destroyed but other sources reported two. ‘The Iskander tactical missile system presumably wiped out three launchers of the US-made Patriot system near Pokrovsk,’ a source told TASS.

Each battery has five components: The missiles themselves, the missile launcher, a radar antenna, a control truck and a power-plant truck.

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