The directional canisters are not nearly as much of a drawback as you make it sound:
1) The FCR on both the Patriot and the S-300 covers a small sector in azimuth and elevation. Having omnidirectional launchers is an academic advantage that in practice cannot be utilized
2) The missiles can change course post launch. Iron Dome also has directional launchers and does just fine.
The Patriot in Ukraine is technologically superior to the S-300. It is able to intercept Kinzhal ALBMs, unlike the S-300 Ukraine fields.
Targeting radar on the S-300 can turn and choose a driection ,but on hte patriot the missile can't.
I don't want to start to calculate the loss of the range because the patriot has to shoot backward, but I can assume it could easly be in the half range. And speed. And dramatically reduced killzone.
In the canister of the patriot the main engine ignited, it accelerate with 13-20g for 12 sec.
acceleration length is 10 km ish.
It hasn't got too much space for turning. Addiitonaly, best part of the patriot missiles hasn't got thrust vector control , means the missile has to accelerate to a high speed to start to turn.
Only the PAC-2 GEM has thrust vector control.
Compare it to S-300
All of them has thrust vector control.
Patriot launchers do not have to be close to radar they can be miles from it this is a known fact.
In 1993, the Army upgraded Patriot to a support remote launch capability, allowing launchers to be deployed up to 10km from the radar.
This reportedly quintupled the system’s defended area from 10-20 square kilometers to roughly 50-100 square kilometers.
Successive upgrades to the system’s Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) missiles and radar achieved further improvements in performance.
Patriot radar could have been miles from these launcher in Kyiv also could have placed a decoy radar near launchers.
There can be missile/topographical / engagement confuguration when the launcher could be way off from the radar, but it is more likelly rare exception, than an usable feature.
Radar has to see the missile , missile has to see the radar and target, and it is true for 90% of the possible targets.
We still scratch the surfce, but the backwardness of the latest patriot is quite visible compared to the oldest S-300 systems.
The main characteristic of the patriot is the cheapness and to achieve it they made endless compromise.
