HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The Army plans to increase its contingent of Patriot air and missile defense battalions but is limited in how fast it can grow due to recruitment challenges.
“Army senior leaders from the Secretary and the Chief [of Staff of the Army], they recognize the demands on the Patriot force. And we are addressing that through increasing our Patriot units that are out there,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commanding general of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters here Tuesday during the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.
(Photo: Lockheed Martin)
Karbler declined to name exactly how many more units the Army plans to increase, but this is because they are “recognizing that we have a requirement to grow the Patriot force structure – we will grow the Patriot force structure.”
However, Karbler admitted air and missile defense units are having the same challenges as the rest of the Army in recruitment for these Patriot roles.
“We’re going to have the same accessions and recruiting challenges that the rest of the Army, the rest of the services, are facing. The Army can throw certain levers to help incentivize” people to come into the Army air defense branch specifically, but they are not limitless.
He said they can look across the Army force structure and see if there are opportunities to offer soldiers an opportunity and reenlistment incentive for soldiers to enlist in the Patriot force.
“I can’t just snap my fingers today and make a sergeant, but I can offer a reenlistment incentive to a young specialist to switch over to air defense.”
Given these recruitment issues, Karbler said the Patriot forces “are not going to grow as fast as we want in terms of meeting some of the tempo challenges that we have here now,” but he said that is a challenge to the overall integrated air and missile defense mission.
An Army spokesperson said the Army currently has 15 active-duty Patriot battalions, with four batteries per battalion. It also has a 16th battalion with programmed funding, but it is not manned or fielded yet.
The fiscal year 2023 defense authorization act included a provision requiring the Secretary of the Army to assess and validate the current and projected battalion and interceptor requirements and acquisition objectives for the Patriot and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) missiles (Defense Daily, June 7).
At the time, the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces subcommittee bill mark said if Congress approved the 16th battery, which it did, that would result in increasing the inventory to 3,376 PAC-3 MSE missiles.
The final authorization bill ultimately allowed the Army Secretary to procure up to four more Patriot battalions for 20 total, if Congress also appropriates the funds.
RTX [RTX] builds the Patriot radar and ground systems while Lockheed Martin [LMT] makes the interceptor missiles. The PAC-3 MSE is the latest upgraded interceptor for the Patriot system.