Ukraine Shoots Down a Russian Hypersonic Missile and Misconceptions About the Patriot Missile.

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I don't believe that the images found in tweets like this are true:

The PAC-3 Patriot uses a kinetic kill warhead, meaning that the warhead physically strikes the incoming TBM, these weapons are closing on each other at a combined speed of ~Mach 10. So there should me more deformation than a little hole.

The common arguments about the effectiveness of the Patriot are twofold.

The first is that the Patriot performed poorly during Operation Desert Storm. There is some truth to this, but it has more to do with the nature of first-generation Patriot missiles having proximity warheads than the effectiveness of the system. The Patriots were hitting, but they just weren't killing because at Mach 10, even explosions take time to form, and the incoming SCUD missile often passed the code of Patriot shrapnel by the time it fully expanded.

The second argument is that Patriots can't shoot down Hypersonic Missiles - but the problem with that line of thinking is that TMBs (Theater Ballistic Missiles) are already hypersonic - meaning that they travel over Mach 5. So killing Hypersonic Cruise missiles may not be that difficult for the Patriot, although it is made harder if the cruise missile his hypersonic and maneuvering.

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