Russian Strike Destroys Patriot Air Defence Radar Guarding Kiev: Major Drone Factory Hit

The Russian Armed Forces on May 24 launched a missile and drone strike on an unnamed Ukrainian drone production facility in the capital Kiev, as well as against a radar station from an MIM-104 Patriot long range air defence systems guarding the capital. The attack on the facility follows Ukraine’s launch of the largest drone strike of the war so far against Russian targets. The Russian Defence Ministry has consistently singled out major defence industrial facilities for targeting, although ending Ukraine’s capacity to produce armaments remains highly challenging due to the very large size of the defence industrial base it inherited from the Soviet Union, which was one of the five largest in the world. The strike also follows a persistent trend of singling out Patriot long range air defence systems for targeting, and occurred just days after the release of footage from the Dnepropetrovsk region showed the destruction of multiple key components of one such system in an <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/dozens-killed-iskander-training-camp" target="_blank">Iskander-M ballistic missile</a> strike, including another AN/MPQ-65 radar station. The high rate of losses of Patriot systems in Ukraine has <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/netherlands-replenishes-ukraine-patriot-losses" target="_blank">seriously diminished</a> NATO members’ ability to replenish its supplies, with production of the system in the United States considered far from sufficient for the requirements of a prolonged high intensity conflict.<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/05/25/article_68327288893aa7_11273705.jpg" title="Russian Navy Frigates Launch Cruise Missile Strikes">It remains uncertain whether the radar system hit in Kiev was an AN/MPQ-65, or its predecessor the AN/MPQ-53, with both having been delivered to Ukraine as aid by NATO members. Although the Patriot system was developed during the Cold War primarily as an anti-aircraft system, the disintegration of the USSR and Warsaw Pact led the U.S. Armed Forces to increasingly focus on the ability to intercept missile attacks by smaller state actors such as Iraq and North Korea, which influenced the design choices when developing&nbsp; newer variants of the system to focus on missile defence. Radars from the Patriot system stand out from those of other air defence systems due to their ‘detection-to-kill’ designs, meaning a single unit performs all functions rather than multiple networked radars. The enhanced AN/MPQ-65 radar provides Patriot systems with expanded search and engagement capabilities. Despite being optimised for defence against short and medium range missile attacks, the Patriot system has nevertheless been filmed on multiple occasions firing unsuccessfully on Russian ballistic missiles, with the Russian Iskander-M missile system having been confirmed by drone footage to have gained <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/patriot-destroyed-russian-iskander-missile" target="_blank">multiple successes</a> destroying the systems in precision strikes.&nbsp;