US doubles down on Patriot to hold China, Russia at bay

The US Army has halted plans to replace its Patriot missile system, opting to enhance the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptor instead.

The PAC-3 MSE has proven effective in Ukraine against Russian hypersonic missiles but still faces challenges in countering advanced missile threats and saturation attacks. The decision, announced during the Association of the US Army’s annual conference, was taken due to the replacement program’s high costs, Defense News reported.

The report says that the US Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) system, which includes the Integrated Battle Command System and the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), will continue to evolve.

It will focus on enhancing the PAC-3 MSE to counter future threats, including hypersonic and maneuverable ballistic missiles expected by 2040.

Defense News states that the US Army is exploring tighter integration between the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Patriot systems to create more efficient battle space management by allowing the use of both interceptors against advanced threats.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has already conducted some integration work in the Indo-Pacific theater, demonstrating the potential benefits of this approach.

The Patriot missile has a mixed combat record in Ukraine, showing effectiveness against Russian hypersonic missiles while also exhibiting vulnerabilities.

For instance, in May 2023, The New York Times reported that Ukrainian-operated Patriot missile air defense systems successfully intercepted six Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missiles over Kiev.

That success, noted by Peter Mitchell in a May 2023 Modern War Institute article, may stem from the Kinzhal’s limitations. Mitchell says hypersonic missiles use scramjet or other advanced propulsion systems for sustained high-speed maneuverability, but the Kinzhal employs a solid-fuel rocket engine.

Mitchell says that design raises doubts about its ability to maintain hypersonic speeds throughout its flight, particularly during the terminal phase, making it susceptible to interception.

He mentions that technical analysis suggests that Kinzhal lacks the agility and maneuverability expected of hypersonic weapons, likening it to a “giant lawn dart” with explosives rather than a sophisticated missile.

However, Moscow Times, an independent Russian media outlet, reported this month that Russia had targeted and struck two US-made Patriot missile launchers, a control station and a radar integral to the system with an Iskander ballistic missile in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, specifically in Pavlohrad, Ukraine.

Explaining the success of the strike, Viktor Bodrov notes in an article this month for Russian state media outlet TASS that improvements in Russia’s reconnaissance-strike complex in identifying and destroying these air defense systems, coupled with Ukraine’s tendency to deploy them close to the front line to cover its troops, may have led to their destruction.

While the Patriot PAC-3 MSE has hit-to-kill capability for precise destruction of incoming missiles, it may not provide adequate defense against many missiles in a saturation attack. Further, the Patriot PAC-3’s high cost of US$3.7 million per interceptor and extended production time of close to 20 months may handicap its effectiveness in such a situation.

In a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) article this month, Jonathan Panter mentions that despite Israel neutralizing Iran’s direct missile attacks in April and October 2024 with the support of close military partners like the US, the increasing sophistication and frequency of attacks could strain these defenses.

He emphasizes that the US faces potential security trade-offs as it remains committed to supporting Israel, which could impact its strategic interests in other regions.

In line with that, the Associated Press (AP) reported this month that US Patriot missile donations to Ukraine and the recent decision to deploy a THAAD missile battery to Israel strain the US Army’s air defense forces and lead to delays in modernizing its missile systems.

AP says these moves add to the strain of troop deployments, as the US Army struggles to ensure that troops in the continental US have sufficient time to rest and train. The report mentions that repeated deployments also make it challenging to get these systems into depots where they can be upgraded.

Those problems may be magnified in the Indo-Pacific region, where China has more advanced and numerous missiles than either Russia or Iran.

China operates the DF-21D “carrier killer” medium-range, road-mobile anti-ship ballistic missile, designed to target ships at sea with a range of 1,450 to 1,550 kilometers and an accuracy of 20 meters Circular Error Probable (CEP).

Due to its maneuverable warhead and precision, it is a significant threat to naval assets, particularly aircraft carriers, underscoring China’s advancing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities.

Apart from the DF-21D, China also has the DF-26 “Guam killer” intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with a range of 4,000 kilometers. The missile can carry conventional and nuclear warheads, and its modular design allows rapid payload swaps. As with the DF-21D, the DF-26B variant has anti-ship capability.

Asia Times reported in September 2024 that China might also opt to exploit weaknesses in the US kill chains and launch attacks from multiple domains such as space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum in conjunction with missile attacks to defeat US missile defenses.

Integrating different missile defense systems like Patriot and THAAD could pose a difficulty. In August 2023, Asia Times pointed out that disjointed systems might not effectively counter an enemy in a saturation attack using various advanced weapons, such as drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons.

Given the limitations of US missile defense systems, the US and its allies may have to adopt a different deterrence paradigm, focusing on the capabilities to strike back against an adversary.

In line with that, Melanie Sisson argues in a May 2022 Brookings article that the US should adopt a strategy of deterrence by punishment rather than denial to prevent China from using force against Taiwan.

Sisson points out that deterrence by denial, which aims to convince China it would lose a military conflict, is deemed costly and risky, potentially leading to immediate war with a nuclear-armed adversary.

In contrast, she says deterrence by punishment seeks to make China’s costs of aggression prohibitively high, leveraging economic sanctions, diplomatic measures and military support for Taiwan. According to her, the latter approach is more pragmatic, flexible and less likely to escalate into full-scale war.