This reads as though these are already deployed. If that is so, why have we not seen them being used in Ukraine? Surely the ground based, city defenses lasers he mentioned would be invaluable there?
As far as I know none of them have been deployed to Ukraine. They probably require specialized personnel to run so even if they did want to send them there the Ukraine government would have to send specialists off to training first. Plus, it seems like the Patriots are working better than expected, even shooting down "hypersonic" missiles, much to the embarrassment of the Russian military.
I think this article has somewhat fallen into the imagined capabilities trap that US arms manufacturers were constantly in during the Cold War. They would see Soviet propaganda about their new invincible weapons system and do some math on what it would take to make it work and then try to design systems to counter that paper exercise. Then they get a sample of the real thing and it turns out the Soviets were outright lying about the capabilities and the counter they developed is ridiculous overkill.
> those "downed" missiles somehow cause a "minor" damage to the Patriot battery doing it
Thirty missiles were fired, twenty nine intercepted [1]. Sustaining minor, i.e. quickly repaired, damage after a 97% interception rate against a supposedly technologically advanced adversary is pretty damn good.
For some reason, you forget the usual disclaimer "Ukraine says" and instead state it as a fact. It's hard to take them at face value similarly to their Russian counterparts. Also the "minor" claim is also maid by an interested party. If it was just a paint job, I think they would've preferred to simply stay silent on the matter. With available objective data we know that two explosions have happened on the ground level and that 2 launched Patriot missiles have failed, which is a fairly high value.
> you forget the usual disclaimer "Ukraine says" and instead state it as a fact
It’s been corroborated by the U.S. and allies [1]. The Kremlin hasn’t disputed the charge.
(The U.S. also said a PATRIOT battery was damaged while Kyiv claimed no such thing. As others have speculated, this was probably a radar unit that was targeted and damaged.)
At this distance I can't even tell that they're explosions, let alone Patriot batteries (there weren't only Patriot systems here). I'm sorry but that is not objective proof of anything.
30 of various missiles were sent. 30 were taken out. The debris of one (still following its trajectory) hit a Patriot radar - it was repaired in <24hr.
Seems pretty straightforward.
You forgot the step where you use what you learned from the old stuff failing to develop even newer stuff, then hopefully you can give away the new old stuff and start the cycle again.
