Patriot Missile Defence Force: According to a press conference on August 8 given by the commander of Space and Missile Defence Command, the U.S. Army will expand the size of its Patriot air and missile defence force organisation.
Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler stated at the Space and Missile Defence Symposium that “the Army senior leaders — from the secretary [to] the chief — they recognise the demands on the Patriot force.” By expanding the number of Patriot units deployed, we are addressing that.
Karbler declined to provide an exact number for the additional Patriot units the Army intends to field, stating he did not want to speak before senior Army leadership. We must increase the size of the Patriot force structure, and we will do so, he declared.
As part of the fiscal 2023 National Defence Authorization Act, Congress ordered that the Army submit a report on whether it requires additional Patriot batteries. The Army now possesses 15 Patriot battalions in its active force, and funding has been approved to add one more.
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Demands placed on the Army’s air defence unit have long been a problem for the organisation. With deployment periods that occasionally exceeded the typical six- to nine-month rotations, Patriot units have historically held the record for the greatest operational tempos across the service for more than ten years.
Despite wanting to expand air defence units, the service is having difficulty attracting new recruits. As with the rest of the Army and other services, Karbler predicted that “we’re going to have the same accessions and recruiting challenges.” The Army has some levers at its disposal to encourage a young expert to enlist in the Army and join the air defence department.
The Army has gotten some support, such as pay incentives and an effort to adhere to dwell restrictions, but the difficulty is finding air defenders, Karbler told Defence News at the same conference last year
Karbler stated last year that “seeing if there are opportunities for soldiers who want to re-enlist to enlist, to come into the Patriot force” is one way to recruit air defenders. Although I am unable to produce a sergeant out of thin air right now, I can persuade a young specialist to switch to air defence by offering him a reenlistment incentive.
While the Army will expand the Patriot force structure in response to these difficulties, “we are not going to grow as fast as we want to in terms of meeting some of the tempo challenges that we have here right now.”
But it’s also not just a Patriot challenge, right? he continued. Since integrated air and missile defence is a collaborative effort, everyone has given to support air and missile defence internationally, including our joint partners and our allied partners.
