Ukraine is developing its own air defence system with capabilities equivalent to the American Patriot system, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has said.
Okay, I’m going to be the Debbie Downer here – I don’t think that Ukraine’s going to be able to do that in the kind of timeframe that would matter, if the aim is ballistic missile defense rather than just a long-range antiaircraft missile. The US spent a lot of time and resources on ballistic missile defense to get where it was.
it could have defended the Trypillia Thermal Power Plant from the Russian attack
It sounds like that was a ballistic missile attack:
The Trypillia thermal power plant, which was completely destroyed by a Russian ballistic missile attack on 11 April
Andrii Hota, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PJSC Centrenergo, Ukraine’s national energy company, believes that given the constant danger of Russian attacks, the rebuilding of the Trypillia Thermal Power Plant (TPP) in Kyiv Oblast without providing Ukraine with air defence systems is an “exercise in futility”.
The Western alternative that I’m aware of is the Aster 30 fired by the SAMP/T from Eurosam, and from what I was reading earlier in the war – and it’s possible that things might have changed, if Eurosam managed to figure out and address whatever the issue is – it sounded like Russian ballistic missiles were getting past those. Zelenskyy had some very unhappy comments about how some other missile than Patriot wasn’t able to intercept ballistic missiles, and I didn’t see any other anti-ballistic-missile that had been sent to Ukraine, so I’m pretty sure that at least at that point, the Asters weren’t stopping Russia’s ballistic missiles. And if it was subsequently resolved, I haven’t seen news about it…and I’d think that both Ukraine and Eurosam would very much like to publicly release that if they had; for Eurosam, it’d be an endorsement of their weapon’s capability and for Ukraine, would be a morale-booster. I have seen a lot of news about the Patriot.
Maybe they could reverse-engineer and clone the Patriot. I would think that that would create its own political issues and I don’t know how easy it’d be to manufacture in Ukraine under wartime conditions. I can imagine that if I were Ukraine and thought I could manage it and that it were critical to the war, I might go ahead and do it and work out issues with the US later. But even that may not be practical, given what I’ve seen as to estimates as to timeframe in the war.
I don’t know how viable it is to go do a new ABM system from scratch, including all the testing and research, especially under the constraints that they’re working with (time, resources, Russia probably placing any development on Ukrainian territory that it can find as a top-priority target). Turkey – which has its own share of headaches, though far less than Ukraine is dealing with – spent years trying to build a similar ABM system, and it doesn’t sound like they were successful. And even Lockheed Martin, which has an existing product and production lines and had started to expand capacity some time back, and doesn’t have any of the headaches that Ukraine does, is still going to take years to scale up.
While the Army has yet to fund another missile production increase, Lockheed decided in the latter part of 2022 that it would continue to invest internally to be able to build 650 a year. “Lockheed could see the demand out there,” Davidson said, adding that the company plans to hit that number in 2027.
Honestly, if I were running things in Kyiv, I think that I didn’t have a way to do active defense against ballistic missiles, I’d probably try to passively-harden a site enough against ballistic missile attack to survive it.
The main assets of the Trypilska TPP were four pulverized coal and two diesel fuel units with a capacity of 300 MW each. There were also six turbines and generators with a total nominal capacity of 1,800 MW. The transformers are of the TDC-400000/330 type.
So, okay. It won’t be as efficient, and that’s going to be a hassle after the war. But maybe it’s possible to grab a field and start sticking 1MW generators in revetments sufficiently spaced that one missile cannot hit multiple of the generators. A ballistic missile is going to cost more than what one of those does. Same thing for smaller, dispersed storage tanks, transformers, etc.
That won’t make it immune to ballistic missiles. But it will provide passive resiliency, and that might be enough to kill off the utility of the ballistic missiles.
It’s not possible to do that for all industry, while ABM interceptors can cover more than just one industrial installation. If Russia can’t effectively use ballistic missiles against power generation, they’re going to use them against the next-most-important thing on their priority list. But if one considers that power infrastruture is probably about the most-critical, that might be sufficient.
Okay, I’m going to be the Debbie Downer here – I don’t think that Ukraine’s going to be able to do that in the kind of timeframe that would matter, if the aim is ballistic missile defense rather than just a long-range antiaircraft missile. The US spent a lot of time and resources on ballistic missile defense to get where it was.
It sounds like that was a ballistic missile attack:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/04/12/7450897/
The Western alternative that I’m aware of is the Aster 30 fired by the SAMP/T from Eurosam, and from what I was reading earlier in the war – and it’s possible that things might have changed, if Eurosam managed to figure out and address whatever the issue is – it sounded like Russian ballistic missiles were getting past those. Zelenskyy had some very unhappy comments about how some other missile than Patriot wasn’t able to intercept ballistic missiles, and I didn’t see any other anti-ballistic-missile that had been sent to Ukraine, so I’m pretty sure that at least at that point, the Asters weren’t stopping Russia’s ballistic missiles. And if it was subsequently resolved, I haven’t seen news about it…and I’d think that both Ukraine and Eurosam would very much like to publicly release that if they had; for Eurosam, it’d be an endorsement of their weapon’s capability and for Ukraine, would be a morale-booster. I have seen a lot of news about the Patriot.
Maybe they could reverse-engineer and clone the Patriot. I would think that that would create its own political issues and I don’t know how easy it’d be to manufacture in Ukraine under wartime conditions. I can imagine that if I were Ukraine and thought I could manage it and that it were critical to the war, I might go ahead and do it and work out issues with the US later. But even that may not be practical, given what I’ve seen as to estimates as to timeframe in the war.
I don’t know how viable it is to go do a new ABM system from scratch, including all the testing and research, especially under the constraints that they’re working with (time, resources, Russia probably placing any development on Ukrainian territory that it can find as a top-priority target). Turkey – which has its own share of headaches, though far less than Ukraine is dealing with – spent years trying to build a similar ABM system, and it doesn’t sound like they were successful. And even Lockheed Martin, which has an existing product and production lines and had started to expand capacity some time back, and doesn’t have any of the headaches that Ukraine does, is still going to take years to scale up.
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2024/04/09/how-companies-plan-to-ramp-up-production-of-patriot-missiles/
Honestly, if I were running things in Kyiv, I think that I didn’t have a way to do active defense against ballistic missiles, I’d probably try to passively-harden a site enough against ballistic missile attack to survive it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypilska_thermal_power_plant
So, okay. It won’t be as efficient, and that’s going to be a hassle after the war. But maybe it’s possible to grab a field and start sticking 1MW generators in revetments sufficiently spaced that one missile cannot hit multiple of the generators. A ballistic missile is going to cost more than what one of those does. Same thing for smaller, dispersed storage tanks, transformers, etc.
That won’t make it immune to ballistic missiles. But it will provide passive resiliency, and that might be enough to kill off the utility of the ballistic missiles.
It’s not possible to do that for all industry, while ABM interceptors can cover more than just one industrial installation. If Russia can’t effectively use ballistic missiles against power generation, they’re going to use them against the next-most-important thing on their priority list. But if one considers that power infrastruture is probably about the most-critical, that might be sufficient.