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President Biden has permitted the deployment of one other Patriot missile system to Ukraine, senior administration and army officers stated, because the nation struggles to fend off Russian assaults on its cities, infrastructure and electrical grid.
Mr. Biden’s resolution got here final week, the officers stated, after a collection of high-level conferences and an inside debate over the best way to meet Ukraine’s urgent wants for bolstered air defenses with out jeopardizing U.S. fight readiness.
The new Patriot system — the second that the United States has despatched to Ukraine — will come from Poland, the place it has been defending a rotational drive of American troops who shall be returning to the United States, officers stated.
The system may very well be deployed to Ukraine’s entrance traces within the subsequent a number of days, U.S. officers stated, relying on any upkeep or modifications it wants.
Considered one of many United States’ finest air-defense weapons, the Patriot features a highly effective radar system and cell launchers that fireside missiles at incoming projectiles.
It can also be one of many scarcest weapons methods within the U.S. arsenal. Pentagon officers refuse to reveal what number of it has, however one senior army official stated that the Army has deployed solely 14 of them, within the United States and world wide. American allies even have Patriots, and two of these nations have despatched a pair to Ukraine, however U.S. officers say they hope European powers will ship extra.
Officials describe shifting the crucial methods world wide’s sizzling spots like a shell recreation, assessing which world disaster requires them most to defend U.S. troops, bases and allies.
The demand for Patriots and different air defenses from the Pentagon’s Central Command, which conducts operations within the Middle East, has been particularly intense over the previous 12 months, and significantly since Hamas’s lethal assault in opposition to Israel in October.
That regional menace was underscored in April when Iran fired greater than 300 ballistic and cruise missiles, and self-exploding drones, at Israel. A mixture of Israeli, American and different allied aerial and floor defenses thwarted most of that assault with comparatively few casualties. But it made shifting any Patriot batteries from the area a nonstarter, officers stated.
With tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula, shifting any Patriot batteries from defending in opposition to a doable North Korean assault was additionally deemed too dangerous, officers stated.
Pentagon officers didn’t wish to transfer any batteries from the United States. There is a Patriot battery at Fort Sill, Okla., for coaching American and Ukrainian troops, however shifting it might take away coaching, officers stated. Other batteries defending bases and troops within the United States, together with in Hawaii, have been both deemed too far-off or vital for homeland protection.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and different senior Pentagon leaders have appealed to European allies to switch their methods to Ukraine. “There are international locations which have Patriots, and so what we’re doing is continuous to have interaction these international locations,” Mr. Austin informed the House Armed Services Committee in April. “I’ve talked to the leaders of a number of international locations,” he added, “encouraging them to surrender extra functionality.”
Two different nations have responded to Ukraine’s plea for extra Patriots. Germany has thus far deployed one Patriot system, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stated a second can be deployed by the tip of June. The Netherlands has additionally deployed a Dutch-American battery in Ukraine, and negotiations are underway to ship a second.
Administration officers hope the deployment of one other U.S. Patriot system will nudge allies to do the identical.
“Ukraine wants extra, that’s a reality,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO’s army committee, stated in an interview final week. “Nations which have these weapons methods must make the choice to take extra threat in opposition to their very own readiness.”
At a information briefing throughout Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s journey to Kyiv final month, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated Ukraine urgently wanted “seven batteries, of which two batteries are vital, and so they have been vital yesterday, in order that we may defend the town of Kharkiv and the whole area of Kharkiv.”
Beyond Kharkiv, Ukraine should take pressing steps to guard Odesa within the south, army analysts stated, in addition to the nation’s electrical grid.
In current months, a barrage of Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s energy vegetation and substations has severely hobbled power infrastructure, forcing Ukrainian authorities to order nationwide rolling blackouts. That has raised considerations about what’s going to occur when the chilly climate arrives and the usage of heating gadgets will increase the load on the power system.
U.S. officers stated there was comparatively little high-level debate over whether or not to provide Ukraine with one other Patriot. But officers stated that Mr. Austin and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, debated which of the U.S. Patriots to ship.
The two males assessed that the Pentagon may transfer a Patriot battery in Poland, which had the good thing about being subsequent door to Ukraine.
The difficulty will come up this week when Mr. Austin and General Brown journey to Belgium for NATO and allied protection conferences.
“I feel you’ll be able to count on to see air protection will, for all the plain causes, be a subject of debate,” Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, stated on Monday.
The Patriot is by far the costliest single weapon system that the United States has equipped to Ukraine, at a complete value of about $1.1 billion: $400 million for the system and $690 million for the missiles.
