boots on the ground.
“There's no discussion about putting a Patriot battery in Ukraine. In order to do that you have to put U.S. troops with it to operate it,” a senior defense official said Thursday. “It is not a system that the Ukrainians are familiar with and as we have made very clear, there will be no U.S. troops fighting in Ukraine.” - March 2022
Now we are sending Patriot batteries, but the news reports today don't seem to address this topic [boots on the ground] and what changed. I can't imagine that we are trusting a Patriot missile defense battery to Ukranians only.
And, very clearly, Patriot missile defense batteries are a nuclear deterrent as they are effective against Iskanders among other shorter range systems.
All the above is an escalation, Ned.
Who knows what the dying Putin is thinking, but this war is like watching cancer grow on your arm. At some point it will be too late to stop the inevitable results.
Link: https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/03/why-us-wont-give-patriot-interceptors-ukraine/363042/