- A Ukrainian company is producing steel armor for the country’s Patriot air-defense batteries.
- The armor consists of small plates that wrap around the exterior of the Patriot’s control unit.
- It is intended to protect the highly valuable systems from Russian missile shrapnel and debris.
A Ukrainian defense initiative is making steel armor for the country’s inventory of American-made Patriot batteries, providing the air-defense systems with extra protection against shrapnel.
The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile system that has been a critical part of Ukraine’s air-defense umbrella. Several Western nations, including the US, have sent Patriot control systems, launchers, and interceptor missiles to Kyiv to help it fend off massive Russian bombardments, but it only has a few Patriots, making protection key to maintaining Ukraine’s defenses.
Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front, a Ukrainian initiative that has built protective screens for tanks and armored fighting vehicles, announced on Friday that engineers from Metinvest, the country’s largest steel producer, have developed new armor for the Patriot.
The heavy armor consists of around 200 steel plates, each around 8 millimeters thick, that wrap around the exterior of the Patriot’s control unit, where the crew sits to operate the system. The protective plates are designed to shield the control unit from missile shrapnel and blast fragments.
Oleksandr Myronenko, the Metinvest Group’s chief operating officer, said the company developed the project from scratch in under two months. “Air defenders also need reliable protection,” he stressed in a statement. The total weight of the armor is 2.6 metric tons, but, the company said, it doesn’t impact mobility or functionality.
Mass production of the armor is underway, but the first of the plates has already been installed on an undisclosed number of Patriot control units. Business Insider has reviewed video footage of the steel plates on one such unit.
Screengrab via Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front defense initiative
Screengrab via Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front defense initiative
Screengrab via Rinat Akhmetov’s Steel Front defense initiative
The Patriot is a workhorse for the Ukrainian military and has been since the first air-defense battery arrived in April 2023. Kyiv has relied heavily on the system to defend its skies from Russian missiles and warplanes. It operates them alongside other Western-provided and Soviet-era air defenses.
The Patriot has specifically received praise for its success against the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, a Russian air-launched ballistic missile that Moscow has said is impossible to intercept.
Beyond protecting the Patriots, Steel Front has also produced screens for various armored vehicles in service with the Ukrainian military, including Soviet-era tanks like the T-64 and T-72 and American-made systems like the M1 Abrams tank and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.
These welded screens are designed to protect these highly vulnerable vehicles from threats like the small, exploding first-person view (FPV) drones that have wreaked havoc on the battlefield, destroying armored vehicles sometimes worth millions for a tiny fraction of that cost. Cage armor has become increasingly common as the drone threat has become more prolific, but the designs vary significantly in both quality and sophistication.
