The commander of the 96th missile brigade of the "Center" Air Command, Colonel Serhiy Yaremenko ("Hranit") spoke about the work of anti-aircraft fighters who first shot down the Kinzhal from the Patriot complex.
He told ArmyInform about this.
All training using the Patriot complex against various types of ballistic missiles, which are in Russiaʼs service, was in simulation mode. Even during the simulation of the air situation, the results were not 100 percent. For the first time, Kinzhal managed to be shot down on May 4, their next attack was massive.
"Almost simultaneously, 16 ballistic targets flew from different directions, most of them aimed at the Patriot complex. I am always proud of my subordinates, but this time I was shocked by their endurance even more than usual. People understood that ballistic missiles were moving directly at them. They did not panic for a second, acted in a coordinated and organized manner, distributed the targets in sectors, ensured their destruction at a minimum range, high enough to minimize damage to the infrastructure. I was in touch with the division commander and understood what a serious professional and moral test this was. After the report "The airspace is clean, all targets are destroyed", no one restrained their emotions," Serhiy Yaremenko noted.
In total, Patriot destroyed more than 80 air targets in a month of operation. The anti-aircraft fighters have a tradition of marking destroyed targets on the complexes, but the stencil with the Kinzhal has not yet been produced.
Currently, the main problem of air defense is precisely the number, which is determined in view of the list of important state objects that need to be covered.
"It is clear that we will not be able to close the entire country in any case. Even the Americans closed extremely important state facilities, military groups, and training bases. [...] At the same time, there is currently no problem with integrating the complexes into the general air defense system of Ukraine. We passed this stage after receiving the IRIS-T, Crotale, NASAMS complexes. Now we will integrate at least the Indian complex without any problems and start using it. Our signalmen are doing truly incredible things — they have integrated the data coming from the radars of Western systems into a single information processing system," Yaremenko added.
- On May 4, 2023, the air defense system shot down the Russian Kinzhal missile for the first time. Then this Kinzhal flew to the Patriot complex and wanted to shoot it down.
- On May 16, there was a massive attack, then a Russian missile still damaged the Patriot, but did not destroy it. The complex was restored in a few days.