Ukraine uses American Patriot Defense System to knock a Russian hypersonic missile out of the sky
The Russians boasted about how they had hypersonic missiles, and that the United States did not have anything that could shoot these missiles out of the sky. The Ukrainians proved the Russians wrong with the announcement that they successfully shot down a Russian Kh-47 missile using the American Patriot Defense System. The Russian hypersonic missile was launched from Russian airspace. The Kh-47 is reported to be able to travel up to 10 times the speed of sound and travel up to 1,250 miles.
From the Associated Press:
Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said in a Telegram post that the Kinzhal-type ballistic missile had been intercepted in an overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital earlier in the week. It was also the first time Ukraine is known to have used the Patriot defense systems.
“Yes, we shot down the ‘unique’ Kinzhal,” Oleshchuk wrote. “It happened during the night time attack on May 4 in the skies of the Kyiv region.”
Oleshchuk said the Kh-47 missile was launched by a MiG-31K aircraft from the Russian territory and was shot down with a Patriot missile.
The Kinzhal is one of the latest and most advanced Russian weapons. The Russian military says the air-launched ballistic missile has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound, making it hard to intercept.
A combination of hypersonic speed and a heavy warhead allows the Kinzhal to destroy heavily fortified targets, like underground bunkers or mountain tunnels.
The Ukrainian military has previously admitted lacking assets to intercept the Kinzhals.
“They were saying that the Patriot is an outdated American weapon, and Russian weapons are the best in the world,” Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on Ukraine’s Channel 24 television. “Well, there is confirmation that it effectively works against even a super hypersonic missile.” Ihnat said.
He said successfully intercepting the Kinzhal is “a slap in the face for Russia.”
Ukraine took its first delivery of the Patriot missiles in late April. It has not specified how many of the systems it has or where they have been deployed, but they are known to have been provided by the United States, Germany and the Netherlands.
The Associated Press has additional information on this story.
I betcha putin is now hyper ventilating over the loss of his super duper high speed missile.
Aw, poor Vlad. /sarc
As a retired member of the vast military industrial complex and
more specifically a retired radar engineer that got to work on the
above mentioned system, all I can say is ha,ha,ha, ha, and ha.
Our stuff works.
As someone who did something similar for 8 of my 24 years of service I can confirm it does indeed work. However in this particular case I imagine either great planing or luck played a significant role.
Easy shot? I’d take one any day– steel’s on target same as a difficult one.
Spinners gonna spin?
Fixed that for ya
Seriously doubt it. The physics doesn’t work.
But you never know. If it did happen, it wasn’t a Patriot.
As for physics, how do you knock out a missile going Mach5+ that will reach its target within a minute?
Get there first.
Get in it’s way.
Get in it’s underwear (track via missle).
Daily Mail reports it as 5x the speed of light…not likely.
Others report it as 5x the speed of sound…no big deal.
5x the speed of light? Einstein would be very surprised.
It would have gotten there before it was even launched.
Wow, if they had a volley of those than Russia not only won the yesterday but the US is in big trouble.
Doc Brown could not be reached for comment
He’s busy…
Well, lets do some basic math.
There is one Patriot Battery in the Ukraine
A Patriot missile has a range of less than 200 km and can go Mach 5 max
The Russian Hypersonic missile can hit anywhere in the Ukraine and travels a minimum of Mach 5.
The Ukraine is as big as Texas.
Could it be done? If everything was perfectly aligned, you knew the target and launch time to perfection and then moved the entire battery to be on the flight path.
How Ghost of Kiev probable is that?
In Spaceballs jargon that is beyond mere ridiculous speed, now were entering…ludicrous speed.
The Russians advertise their systems as having a specific type of performance, a lot of their claims are suspected to be exaggerated. Their missile was one of those that is reported to go 10 times the speed of sound… But the actual speed could be much slower.
The Russians have done the same thing here as they did during the space race… Field technology/equipment considered “unpassable” by western standards “to get there first.” They pay for this short term “first” success in the long run. Our astronauts found this out first hand during the Apollo-Soyuz linkup, how the US was really “lightyears” ahead of the Soviets and why the Soviets initially had their firsts before we did.
The US side is working on fielding hypersonic missiles and, as history related to these types of technology indicates, we’ll be ahead of them in this area.
The CCP is pretty much doing the same thing as the Russians. When both countries are doing this, our philosophy of planning and training to fight a near peer/peer adversary with the assumption that their equipment will work as they brag, and their military would perform as they brag, with unrestricted warfare mixed in, would pay dividends should crap hit the fan in the Indo-Pacific region.
You have to plan that way to avoid be going caught short. At any given point in time good leadership and logistics could combine to create a unit operating at peak efficiency. It may be unlikely, but it is still possible.
Always helps to have system on and folk looking in the right direction, of course.
Gotta be fast. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Progress happens. Just sayin’.
I’m gonna go ahead and call you out and say you have no idea what you are talking about.
A PAC3 GEM-T also travels at Mach 5. They are normally launched without any operator interface because nothing that follows the aerial characteristics of a hypersonic missile, cruise missile or TBM will match anything civilian or non-threats. So within a couple of seconds of it appearing on the radar an intercept launch will take place with the operator finding out after.
It still takes luck and good planning. But imagine if you are throwing a football at me. I can throw a football at that football and hit it in the air without too much trouble. The farther off to the side of me you throw it the harder it is going to be for me to hit it. But it can still be done if I am good enough.
“nothing that follows the aerial characteristics of a hypersonic missile, cruise missile or TBM will match anything civilian or non-threats”
Not to mention the IFF query/response built into most systems.
Even the shoulder launched Stinger has that capability.
Concur that 2banana’s info could be improved.
Get some! (Forgive stock pic.)
I am going to take a guess that Russians were actually shooting at the Patriot Radar. If it was active, it is going to be the biggest target on the battlefield. It would be quite a PR coup to take it down too. The Russians haven’t displayed the capability to do that and based upon how Russian officers think and behave it is doubtful they will.
A direct back-azimuth intercept is always the easiest, too. Just sayin’.
Probably not 180 out depending upon where all the pieces were, but shooting standoff from Russia didn’t do them any favors either. They likely drank the kool-aid on radar evading capabilites of hyper-sonics and had no way to test it.
“But Pavel said it would work… “
Plus we were probably reading their mail in situ.
‘Down the throat’ shot, got’cha.
“If it was active, it is going to be the biggest target on the battlefield.”
If so, it shouldn’t take much capability to take it down. As long as you have more HARMs than there are Patriot missiles, the radar goes down; no need for hypersonic or stealth.
Perhaps the Russians are just probing the Patriot capabilities and testing their own.
To be sure that is part of it. However, Russia has allegedly depleted a huge volume of their HSM inventory in their assault upon the Ukraine. As these aren’t easily replaced, if a time comes when they really need them, they won’t have them.
Well no, The radar will protect itself before all other protected assets. Because without the radar the rest of the system is useless.
“As long as you have more HARMs than there are Patriot missiles, the radar goes down”
Like the Germans are alleged to have said; “Our Tigers are worth 10 Shermans; our problem is that there are always 11 Shermans”.
Update: Business Insider says pretty much so.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-trying-kill-patriot-us-034220732.html
[…] Ukraine uses American Patriot Defense System to knock a Russian hypersonic missile out of the sky […]
Russian Military Hardware not being what the Russkies say it is? Color me surprised-NOT! Much like when we fretted thinking the MiG -25 Foxbat was THE best and most advanced Interceptor in the world until a Soviet Pilot defected to Japan with one, like how they said their tanks we so superior to ours, …
True. The vacuum tube loaded flying brick wasn’t all that. But the fear of the MIG-25 spawned the development and employment of the greatest (battle tested, proven capability) fighter jet ever created. With 115 air to air combat victories and 0 defeats, the F15 Eagle.
They still manufacture some very expensive vacuum tubes
at about half the cost of US brands.
They will accept a high failure rate as long as the suckers
keep buying spares.
Not prudent to underestimate the enemy.
I suspect the Russians are not the only ones who overrate their own hardware.
There may be more to the story:
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/05/06/ukraine-claims-to-have-downed-russian-hypersonic-missile-n548821
The Ukrainians regularly release bogus videos of things as part of their disinformation and PR campaign. This is clearly a day time video, not night.
I clicked on his link, then clicked on the Twitter video as displayed on Twitter. The one who posted the video did not claim that the Patriot System shot down a hypersonic missile, but that a western air defense system shot down a target. Someone responded to him with the comment, “Now do hypersonic missiles.” The response of the thread starter indicated that he was not originally talking about shooting down a hypersonic missile, as he indicated that it was done on May for, at 2 AM.
The video was genuine. What was bogus was the Hot Air article on it that MustangCPT posted.
Valid reports, by the Ukrainian side, say that the hypersonic missile was shot down overnight, during the night time, not during the daytime. This is even quoted in your link. The Hot Air article that you linked to is, unfortunately, “full of hot air.”
The linked article claims that a twitter video reportedly shows the downing of the hypersonic missile, yet, the twitter post does not specify that it is the hypersonic missile being shot down, just that the western air defense was at work. Ukraine has been using western supplied air defense systems before they received the Patriot Missile/Defense system.
As a matter of fact, if you click on the post on twitter, and read the comments, it’s clear that the one who posted the video is not implying that a hypersonic missile is being shot down. Someone responded to him by asking him to do hypersonic missiles. His response was that it was accomplished on May 4 at 2 AM.
Unfortunately, when it comes to reporting on what is happening in Ukraine, conservative sources have tended to be biased in favor of what the Russians argue. This has provided Russian propagandists with a lot of ammunition to bolster their own propaganda efforts.
Not a hypersonic missile getting shot down, but still cool.
The US confirmed that it was a hypersonic missile that got shot down.
And begins the walk back…(this is a very pro Ukrainian news source)
Reports that a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile strike was downed over Kyiv during the night of May 4 are false, the spokesperson for the Air Force Command, Yuriy Ihnat, said on May 5.
https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukrainian-air-force-denies-reports-kinzhal-hypersonic-ballistic-missile-downed-over-kyiv-50322488.html
I went to your link, then clicked on their own link that they’re referencing their story on. They are not saying that the reports are “false,” but that reporting that it was a hypersonic missile that was shot down was premature.
Why?
The experts have to verify the type of missiles shot down before they could officially say what type of missile was shot down. This is an explanation given by some of these sources.
Now, in addition to clicking on the source that your linked used, I clicked on the link that this additional source used to see the explanation they used for concluding that this was a hypersonic missile, without a warhead, that was shot down.
However, there is a verification process that officials have to use before they could argue that they definitely shot down a hypersonic missile.
https://defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/giperzvukovij_h_47_kinzhal_uspishno_zbito_zsu_foto_ulamkiv_j_pojasnennja_prichini_silnogo_vibuhu_unochi_4_travnja_nad_kijevom-11498.html
Okay, more covering spin. Pay no attention to what we said earlier– who do ya believe, us or yer lyin’ eyes?
i don’t believe any of it