German GEM-T Patriot Interceptors for Ukraine Reach Congressional Record — Against 123 Russian RM-48U Target Rounds in 39 Days

Re-transfers of American-made major defence equipment worth USD 14 million or more at original acquisition need this certification, and the recipient being outside NATO sets the longer review period. Delivered on 14 August, the notice will have run its course by mid-September; printing in the Record is the routine last trace, in a block shared with unrelated cases for Kuwait and a helicopter sale. The value is what Germany once paid and not a price, a little under USD 3 million a round.

Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute told Reuters the target rounds let Russia "husband the more capable missiles they have, the Iskanders, but also the KN-23s and the Zircons, for winter when they would want to really lean into their ballistic missile campaign", and that mass use could be meant to run down interceptor stocks. In Brussels on 18 September a Commission spokesman said of Patriot purchases from the EUR 90 billion loan: "The Patriots were approved just last week, so what we need to do is to receive the contracts. We don't have those."

Both of Kaushal's readings depend on a number nobody has published: how many RM-48Us Ukraine chose to engage. A round with a 300-metre error aimed at a city is a threat a battery commander cannot ignore until late in its flight, and a GEM-T is the cheaper of the two Patriot interceptors he has. If even a third of 123 drew a shot, the summer consumed four times the German transfer. The arithmetic is the argument for the USD 700,000 interceptor Fire Point is testing, and it is also a caution on every intercept rate computed on July's 158, which carries the target rounds in its denominator. Pistorius offered PAC-2 rounds from Bundeswehr stock earlier this month against a Ukrainian request for 300 now; Signal No. 149 set the ten beside that, and the Commission's Patriot derogation still has no contract under it.