Just recently, a photo of a large truck transporting a missile launcher in China has attracted widespread attention from military fans on the Internet! After seeing this photo, many netizens recognized at a glance that this missile launcher was suspected to be the latest anti-aircraft missile of the United States' Patriot 3!
Why did the American Patriot 3 appear in China, so some people speculated in combination with the news of Putin's visit to China that this is likely to be a gift brought to China by Putin's visit to China.
So is this Patriot 3 missile launcher real? Is this really the Russian spoils brought by Putin's visit to China? Why is there a Patriot 3 in China?
Where exactly did this missile launcher come from?
On May 16, Putin's special plane arrived in Beijing, and then the next day netizens saw the exposed photo on the Internet, and the almighty netizens found that the location of the transport vehicle was in Chengde City, Hebei Province, China, which is not very far from Beijing!
As a result, countless netizens began to speculate that this Patriot 3 missile launcher may be real, it was captured by Russia from the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, and it can be regarded as a gift from Putin's visit to China to the Chinese military!
After this news came out, there was an uproar on the Internet for a while, and even some specialized military bloggers were difficult to distinguish between the true and the fake for a while! But as the discussion among netizens gradually increased, everyone also saw the loophole in the so-called Patriot 3 launch equipment in the picture!
Although the Patriot 3 transported in China looks very similar to the real one, the real Patriot 3 has a cable interface behind the launch tube, obviously the Xibei cargo that appeared in China is not, and the cable behind the Patriot 3 in China is also very different from the real one, you can see it with a little comparison!
In addition to the difference in appearance, there are also many loopholes in the logic of this statement! At present, neither the Russian media nor the Ukrainian media have ever reported that there is a record of Patriot 3 being captured by Russia in Ukraine!
And at present, the Ukrainian side has probably only received 20 sets of Patriot 3, most of which are deployed in the deep hinterland of Ukraine's rear, although there is news that Russian missiles have destroyed the Patriot 3 missile launcher, but it is completely impossible for Russia to cross thousands of kilometers to transport it back!
And even if Russia really quietly captured the Patriot 3 missile, and was able to preserve it so intact, wouldn't it be more reasonable to put it on display on Russia's Red Square than to bring it to China?
Although the Patriot-3 is a relatively advanced air defense missile of the United States, in terms of missile technology, China really does not need to learn anything from the United States, after all, China is not only an air defense missile for ground attack but also a missile for ship attack, and the range and penetration speed are beyond the reach of the United States!
What's more, the latest anti-aircraft missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers researched by the Western University of Technology is far more advanced than the Patriot Ten Streets, and we have the most advanced technology in the world, so we don't need to study the captured American trophies!
Even if we take 10,000 steps back and say that Putin really brought the Patriot 3 to China, we can't just put it on the board car and swagger to transport, not to mention emptying the road, but at least we have to do some camouflage, like the one in the photo, the mode of transportation is the northwest cargo at a glance!
Why did the Patriot 3 launch vehicle appear in China?
After analysis, we learned that the Patriot 3 that appeared in Hebei was a fake, so who made such a fake and what was its purpose?
In fact, the Patriot 3 that appears in the photo knows at a glance that it is a model imitated by the factory, although such a model can distinguish the real from the fake at a glance, but if it is an aircraft high-altitude reconnaissance or even a satellite picture from a high overhead, the final effect is difficult to distinguish the real from the fake!
Of course, the purpose of China's manufacturing of such a model is certainly not to deceive the United States for reconnaissance, after all, the tension between China and the United States has not yet reached the point of fighting each other! It is quite possible that these Patriot 3s were ordered by the military, but their role was to serve as a model for enemy forces, and even as targets for the PLA Air Force, as well as for long-range missile firing!
In fact, in addition to the large number of Patriot 3 anti-aircraft missiles deployed in the US military units, the United States has also sold a lot of anti-aircraft missiles of this type to Taiwan through arms sales over the years!
If there is a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, China will inevitably destroy Taiwan's air defense positions first, and if there are all such targets here, our air force and satellite reconnaissance will be able to identify the appearance of the Patriot-3 missile launcher from a high altitude, so that they can be discovered and destroyed in time!
In fact, this is not the first time that the PLA has spent a lot of money to make a 1:1 scale model, there have been cases of the PLA using missiles to destroy the scale model of the Indian 155 howitzer in the border plateau area before, and now the PLA is not a strange thing to make a 1:1 scale model of the Patriot 3!
On the contrary, this shows that the training of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is now changing to a full-scale approach to actual combat, and at the same time, we can also draw a conclusion, that is, the PLA is intensively training its troops to solve the Taiwan issue.