SLG Exclusive - Kiev Patriot battery damaged or destroyed in strike
OK so we got a tip-off from Zornkrieger that a Russian missile attack on the Kiev Patriot battery was captured on livestream.
The livestream has now been pulled but I fortunately managed to screen grab the important bit, which we now present to our dear subscribers. My notes:
There was a very rapid barrage of SAMs launched, I counted 30+, which means the entire loadout of a MIM-104 Patriot battery (8 launchers with 4 missiles each).
In the livestream chat there was what appeared to be a government bot claiming the Patriot battery had destroyed 18 Russian targets including 6 Kinzhals (yeah right)
About 6 minutes later there are a lot of flashes from AAA guns (likely Gepard), then three large explosions caused by strikes on the SAM site.
I assess this to be a successful strike on a Ukrainian air defense site, most likely a MIM-104 Patriot battery.
There is no way to determine which weapon was used against the target, however if it was up to me I would use the KH-32.
Kh-32 is a massive missile launched by the Tu-22. It flies at Mach 5 at extremely high altitude then drops vertically down to its target. It has a 500kg RDX warhead so 3 of them striking in the vicinity of a SAM battery would definitely cause a lot of damage.
By the way, if this was indeed a Patriot battery, then there is the possibility of this Russian strike being mostly a spoof attack, designed to force the Ukrainians to launch as many Patriot missiles as possible and expose the battery's phase array radar and control station for as long as possible.
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