According to the general, the organization of interaction between various systems and services, including air defense and the air force, has not been developed in Ukraine.
Moreover, the Patriot and Soviet identification systems use different channels for warning and identifying friend or foe, and the two streams of information must occur almost simultaneously. If the signals show different things, then the work becomes extremely problematic.
“One signal will show that it is ours, and the other will say that it is the enemy or vice versa… If the decision-maker hesitates and thinks for 5-10 seconds whether it is a “friend” or a “foreigner”, it is considered a failure: the missile will already pass through the coverage area of the air defence system during this time,” the officer explained.
In addition, Popov noted, the Americans could have supplied Kiev with a Patriot air defense system without an identification system for fear that it would fall into the hands of the Russian military. According to the general, in this case the system’s codes will be revealed, which poses a serious threat of failure of the entire state’s air defense system.
As a result, the officer said, the air defense system could fire a missile at its own aircraft, and even if those responsible realized in time and pressed the self-destruct button, the fighter could well have been hit by fragments of the munition that exploded as it approached the target.
Earlier, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine admitted the loss of the first F-16 transferred to Ukraine, without naming the cause of the crash. According to Rada MP Maryana Bezugla, the plane was shot down by a Patriot anti-aircraft missile due to a lack of coordination between units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
