Shoot the archer, not the arrow: Ukraine’s missile defense dilemma

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In 1988, the New York Times’ Stephen Engelberg quoted an officer in the United States Navy as saying: “You want to shoot the archer, not the arrow.” The unnamed officer used this idiom to illustrate the Navy’s air and missile defense doctrine to Engelberg, who in turn explained:

Because missiles can be fired well before the plane carrying them is in view, American military doctrine calls for the captain to defend his ship by knocking down hostile aircraft as soon as he believes he is under attack.

This is fairly intuitive. It is both easier and safer to shoot down the plane carrying the missile than it is to shoot down the missile itself after it has already been fired at your ship. This of course applies to land-based air defense as well. Russia’s ongoing campaign of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine continues to greatly stress Ukrainian air and missile defenses.

Air defense missiles are invariably more expensive than the targets they seek to intercept. Providing Ukraine with enough ammunition to defeat every threat Russia sends its way has been an ongoing challenge — one with no end in sight.

Any possible resolution will require an honest assessment of Ukrainian short- and long-term requirements for air defense systems, Western capacity to meet those requirements, and a strategy to reconcile the gaps between them. The Ukrainian government has been direct and consistent in their messaging on this, but Western governments, particularly the Biden Administration in Washington, have been vague and evasive, avoiding firm commitments that might address the fundamental problems. If Ukraine is to have any hope of victory, this needs to change.

Ukraine has received a wide variety of air defenses from its Western partners. These range from additional legacy Soviet systems, such as Slovakia’s sole S-300PMU battery, to the brand-new IRIS-T Surface Launched Medium-range (SLM) from Germany, and the American built PATRIOT. The complete list is too long to detail in full, but the key systems of note are:

• NASAMS, of which 12 full batteries have been pledged by the United States (8 will be delivered by year end), 1 battery pledged by Canada, and a large number of components pledged by Norway;
• IRIS-T SLM, with 12 batteries pledged by Germany (4 delivered to date);
• SAMP/T, with 2 batteries pledged (1 delivered) cooperatively between Italy and France;
• The aforementioned PATRIOT, with 4 Fire Units/batteries delivered (3 German and 1 American) and several more recently committed by a number of different donors, including the United States, Romania, and the Netherlands.

These systems form a large part of Ukraine’s long & medium range air defense network. Though not an insignificant list, when compared to Ukraine’ requirements its inadequacy is revealed.

This past spring, President Zelensky told NATO that Ukraine had an immediate need for a minimum of 7 additional PATRIOT Fire Units (or their equivalents) in addition to those already fielded. Since then, Germany has delivered the 3rd Fire Unit they had pledged, taking it from 7 to 6. Between the additional PATRIOT Fire Unit from the U.S., the 2nd SAMP/T, 1 PATRIOT from Romania, and a joint PATRIOT from the Dutch and an unknown donor, NATO would be close to meeting that requirement.

Spain was also reportedly a possible source of an additional Fire Unit, so if that materialized, then Ukraine would need just one more. This all takes time though. Additional crews must be trained — not just to operate, but also to maintain these additional PATRIOTs. This also creates a larger sustainment burden. Systems need a steady supply of ammunition and spare parts, the latter of which is actually more problematic.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense found a multitude of issues with PATRIOT sustainment. The positive news is that the U.S. still has deep reserves of PATRIOT interceptors, having procured well in excess of 10,000 missiles since 1980. Any lack of air defense interceptors that Ukraine has experienced has not been due to physical scarcity, but rather to a supply problem caused by political considerations in Washington, DC.

Politics has of course been Ukraine’s main problem since day one. Two years into the full-scale war, Western capitals have still failed to deliver even the minimum amount of required air defenses to Ukraine. The picture gets much bleaker when we look at Ukraine’s medium- and long-term requirements to fully build out its integrated air and missile defense network.

Just based on Ukraine’s pre-war air defense force structure, setting aside potential expansion, Kyiv requires a staggering number of assets to fully equip all their units: 30 batteries of 9K35 Strela-10 mobile very short-range air defense (M-VSHORAD) systems, 30 batteries of 9K33 Osa & 9K330 Tor mobile short-range air defense (M-SHORAD) systems, 30 batteries of 9K37 Buk mobile medium-range air defense (M-MRAD) systems, and 30 batteries of S-300P/V long range air defense systems need to be replaced with Western systems.

Comparing those requirements to what Ukraine has received so far, a big disparity is apparent. Strela can be compared to the AN/TWQ-1 Avenger, of which just 20 units have been provided by the U.S. That’s enough for just 3-5 batteries. Osa, Tor, and Buk would need to be replaced with NASAMS & IRIS-Ts on high mobility platforms to fulfill the same doctrinal requirement.

As far as we know, none of Ukraine’s NASAMS or IRIS-Ts are configured to provide true mobile coverage for frontline units. They have been deployed in a semi-static fashion to defend Ukrainian cities. Ukraine would therefore need an additional commitment of 60 new batteries, preferably on tracked platforms, to fulfill that requirement.

Finally, Ukraine will be lucky if it fields a combined 10 PATRIOT & SAMP/T batteries by year end — this out of a required 30. For comparison, the U.S. Army has 15 PATRIOT operational Battalions in service right now, each with an average of 4 batteries. President Zelensky went so far as to say that Ukraine really needed 25 PATRIOT battalions, each with 6-8 batteries! 150-200 PATRIOT batteries far exceed the number that are collectively in service among all PATRIOT operators globally.

Given the daunting scale of Ukrainian needs, supplying them solely from existing stocks has never been an option. This is true of all systems and munitions, but particularly air defense. While the Biden Administration has gone to tender to procure many capabilities for Ukraine — including, notably, those 12 NASAMS — PATRIOT has been bewilderingly absent from this list.

Despite constant pleas from the Ukrainian government, Washington has refused to place any orders for newly produced PATRIOT Fire Units on Ukraine’s behalf. There has been both ample time and money to do this, but nearly two and a half years into the war, Raytheon has received no contracts to build PATRIOTs for Ukraine. This is an inexplicable decision, one that the media has failed to press the Administration on. The specific question has, to my knowledge, never been put to them in a manner that would prompt an explanation.

In April, Assistant Secretary of Defense Wallander suggested in a Congressional hearing that if Congress appropriated additional funds, which they since have, they could consider putting new PATRIOTs on contract. There has been no follow-up on this though. It was revealed the day before the hearing that Raytheon has sufficient facilitization to produce up to 12 Fire Units per year. Achieving that rate though, would require significant investments, lead time, and massive contracts to justify those efforts. Actual production is likely at a Minimum Sustaining Rate, with ongoing fulfillment of several modest contracts for foreign customers, such as Switzerland.

Any PATRIOT orders placed now would be at the back of a growing queue of international customers, who may or may not be amenable to requests to give up their spot in line. Even in a best-case scenario, it would probably still be at least a year before Ukraine could receive a new Fire Unit.

In the alternate history scenario, the Biden Administration uses all $8 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding appropriated by Congress in May 2022 to order 2 dozen PATRIOTs for Ukraine and encourages allies to place their own orders both for themselves and Ukraine. This would have allowed Raytheon to invest in maxing out their production rate, which certainly would have been achieved within 2 years.

With that path untaken, we must now consider what can be done to address the massive capability gap facing Ukraine. Another decision that was delayed for far too long, the commitment of F-16s to the Ukrainian Air Force, looks set to be remedied this summer, when deliveries of the aircraft are expected to begin.

F-16s are an important addition to Ukraine’s arsenal, but they won’t solve any problems overnight. They are certainly capable of flying defensive counter air missions to interdict both unmanned aerial systems and cruise missiles, but that’s just half of the threat spectrum. They won’t be able to shoot down ballistic missiles. The F-16 fleet will also take years to grow to a meaningful size, so ground-based air defenses are still going to have to bear the brunt of incoming Russian missiles. They will help at the margins, but they don’t fundamentally change the air defense calculus. No combination of systems can enable Ukraine to “play catch” with Russian missiles in perpetuity though. To win, Ukraine needs to be able to strike back at Russia.

Here, Ukraine faces another problem created by intransigent Western leaders — chiefly President Biden and German Chancellor Scholz. Ukraine has been begging the Biden Administration for permission to use donated Western weapons to strike strategic targets located on internationally recognized Russian territory since they first started to receive them.

President Biden, fearful of escalation, has prohibited Ukraine from doing so — and not just with American weapons, but with all donated weapons. President Zelensky told The Guardian in May that, despite signals from the UK that Ukraine could defend its territory as the Ukrainians saw fit, they still could not use Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike Russia without approval from Washington. Zelensky stressed to Reuters that his country had abided by all the conditions placed on it by Western weapons donors, as failing to do so would “put the whole volume of weapons at risk.”

The Biden Administration has faced growing bipartisan pressure from Congress to lift these restrictions, but so far it has not budged. The Russian archers sit safely behind an invisible wall constructed by President Biden, shielding them from Ukrainian retaliation. We have seen how effective M39 & M39A1 ATACMS, with their cluster munition payloads, have been in destroying the S-300 & S-400 systems which both protect Russian controlled airspace and launch missiles at Ukrainian cities. Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG have driven the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from Crimea.

Russia can still safely base these assets on their own territory though. Removing all remaining restrictions on Ukraine would imperil every Russian airbase, every logistics hub and any other strategic target within several hundred kilometers of the Ukrainian border. Russian fighter bombers, which the Biden Administration has dubiously claimed were never off limits to begin with, would be at risk as well.

There are no silver bullets of course. Opening Russian territory up to unrestricted strikes will be less impactful now than it would have been when Russia was not yet on a war footing. It will cause the Russian Armed Forces considerable problems though, particularly in the realm of logistics and tactical air support. Additional PATRIOTs being forward deployed with PAC-2 missiles, now free to engage Russian fighter jets, will help protect frontline troops from devastating glide bomb attacks.

Fundamentally, Ukraine cannot be expected to succeed when Russia can strike anywhere on Ukrainian territory with impunity, while Kyiv cannot respond in kind. This long overdue step will help even the playing field and serve as a much-needed morale boost. There is much more that needs to be done to tip the scales in Ukraine’s favour, but lifting restrictions on the use of Western weapons against military targets inside Russia is the easiest.

President Biden, now no longer running for re-election, needs to decide what his legacy will be. There’s still time left for him to change course and become a true champion for Ukrainian victory. If not, he’ll be remembered for doing the absolute minimum to keep Ukraine on life support while ceding control of the escalation ladder to Moscow. It’s time for him to climb up to the parapet with a quiver, and let Ukraine shoot the archer — not just the arrow.