Residents of Kyiv are sleeping once again in overcrowded metro stations or in cars in underground garages. Above, the air war is turning into a turkey-shoot. Russia is bombarding the city with ever more ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
Ukraine, which had previously thwarted most such attacks with Patriot anti-missile batteries, is “going Winchester”—military jargon for running out of ammunition.
The CSIS reckons it will take until 2029 to rebuild Patriot stocks to pre-war levels. That is assuming Congress approves Mr Trump’s gargantuan $1.5trn defence-budget request (a 50% increase on current spending), which is unlikely. Yet Patriots have become the prime system for point-defence—that is, to protect a specific target such as an air base—for 19 countries. Japan produces some 30 PAC-3 interceptors a year under licence, mostly for its own use. MBDA, a European firm, is about to start production in Germany of older PAC-2 models. It could enter production in 2028. CSIS reckons it has used a third of its 3,000-odd Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Because the weapon was never launched, “The cheapest interceptor is the one you never have to fire. Allies’ industrial capacity can help. Reports suggest its manufacturers, Lockheed Martin and RTX, fear losing their know-how, or being upstaged by cheaper Ukrainian versions. But America has depleted its stocks of long-range offensive weapons, too. It has refused to supply them to Ukraine and deliveries to other clients, including Australia, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands, may be delayed.
“Patriot is a dinner-jacket solution: you don’t need it very often, but when you do, very little else will do,” explains Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British think-tank. At a NATO summit in July Mr Trump said that Ukraine, too, would be allowed to make Patriot interceptors under licence, but has since cast doubt on the idea. Lockheed Martin has announced the development of the PAC-3 ACE, aka “Baby Patriot”, which is smaller and less capable than the PAC-3 MSE but will cost half as much. “Air defence cannot be separated from offensive operations,” notes David Deptula, a former American air-force general. There is a lot to be said for shooting the archer—in the form of enemy production sites, command-and-control centres, storage depots and missile launchers—rather than the arrow.
