US to send another battery of Patriot missiles to Ukraine

President Biden has approved the deployment of another Patriot missile system to Ukraine, senior administration and military officials said, as the country struggles to repel Russian attacks on its cities, infrastructure and its electricity network.

Mr. Biden's decision came last week, the officials said, after a series of high-level meetings and internal debate over how to meet Ukraine's urgent needs for enhanced air defense without compromising United States combat readiness.

The new Patriot system, the second the United States is sending to Ukraine, will come from Poland, where it protects a rotating force of American troops returning to the United States, officials said.

The system could be deployed to Ukraine's front lines in the coming days, U.S. officials said, depending on necessary maintenance or modifications.

Considered one of the United States' best air defense weapons, the Patriot features a powerful radar system and mobile launchers that fire missiles at incoming projectiles.

It is also one of the rarest weapon systems in the US arsenal. Pentagon officials refuse to disclose their numbers, but a senior military official said the military has deployed only 14, in the United States and around the world. U.S. allies also have Patriots, and two of those countries have sent some to Ukraine, but U.S. officials hope European powers will send more.

Officials describe moving critical systems around the world's hot spots as a game of shellfish, weighing which global crisis needs them most to defend U.S. troops, bases and allies.

Demand for Patriot and other air defense systems from the Pentagon's Central Command, which conducts operations in the Middle East, has been particularly intense over the past year, and particularly since the deadly attack on the Hamas against Israel in October.

This regional threat was highlighted in April when Iran fired more than 300 ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as self-exploding drones, at Israel. A combination of Israeli, American and allied air and ground defenses thwarted most of this assault with relatively few casualties. But that made it impossible to move Patriot batteries from the area, officials said.

With tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula, moving Patriot batteries away from defense against a possible North Korean attack was also deemed too risky, officials said.

Pentagon officials did not want to move batteries from the United States. There is a Patriot battery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to train U.S. and Ukrainian troops, but moving it would eliminate training, officials said. Other batteries protecting bases and troops in the United States, including Hawaii, were deemed too remote or necessary for home defense.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other senior Pentagon leaders have called on European allies to transfer their systems to Ukraine. There are countries that have Patriots, and so what we do is continue to engage those countries, Mr. Austin told the House Armed Services Committee in April. I have spoken to the leaders of several countries, he added, encouraging them to give up more capabilities.

Two other countries have responded to Ukraine's call for more Patriots. Germany has so far deployed one Patriot system and Chancellor Olaf Scholz said a second would be deployed by the end of June. The Netherlands has also deployed a Dutch-American battery to Ukraine, and negotiations are underway to send a second.

Administration officials hope the deployment of another U.S. Patriot system will prompt allies to do the same.

Ukraine needs more, that's a fact, Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO's military committee, said in an interview last week. Nations that have these weapon systems must make the decision to take more risks with respect to their own readiness.

At a news conference during Secretary of State Antony J. Blinkens' trip to Kyiv last month, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Ukraine urgently needs seven batteries, two of which are needed , and they were needed yesterday, so that we could protect the city of Kharkiv and the entire Kharkiv region.

Beyond Kharkiv, Ukraine must take urgent steps to protect Odessa in the south, military analysts say, as well as the country's power grid.

In recent months, a barrage of Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian power plants and substations has severely hampered energy infrastructure, forcing Ukrainian authorities to order nationwide blackouts. This has sparked concerns about what will happen when cold weather arrives and the use of heaters increases the load on the energy system.

U.S. officials said there was relatively little high-level debate over whether to provide another Patriot to Ukraine. But officials said Mr. Austin and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, debated which of the U.S. Patriots to send.

The two men assessed that the Pentagon could move a Patriot battery to Poland, which has the advantage of being neighboring Ukraine.

The issue will return this week when Mr. Austin and General Brown travel to Belgium for defense meetings of NATO and allied countries.

“I think you would expect that air defense would, for all the obvious reasons, be a topic of discussion,” Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said Monday.

The Patriot is by far the most expensive weapons system the United States has provided to Ukraine, at a total cost of approximately $1.1 billion: $400 million for the system and $690 million for dollars for missiles.

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