Russia is one of the biggest winners in the early days of the largest U.S. military confrontation in decades, as Iranian missiles deplete stocks of Patriot interceptors that Ukraine needs for its defense.
Even before the Iran campaign, production bottlenecks in the U.S.-made Patriot system had drained Ukraine’s reserves and left European allies on yearslong waiting lists. Those shortfalls have allowed Russia to punch through gaps in Ukraine’s air defenses, devastating its power infrastructure and casting Ukrainian cities into blackouts.
U.S. and Gulf states have fired hundreds of interceptors in the opening days of the war to repel Iranian missile and drone barrages. Gulf states possess only days’ worth of interceptors under sustained attack, analysts estimate, potentially forcing Washington to pull from Indo-Pacific and other regional stockpiles, weakening its forward posture elsewhere.
Iran had fired more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones since the start of the campaign, Gen. Dan Caine , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. He said that the U.S. has sufficient munitions for the Iran operation.
Lockheed Martin’s entire 2025 U.S. output of its most advanced interceptor, the PAC-3, was just over 600. At least two Patriot interceptors are typically required to destroy a single ballistic missile—often followed by a third or more if the first pair fail. Production of a single, multimillion-dollar interceptor is limited and can take months, with components coming from across the U.S. and as far afield as Spain.
“For us, this is a matter of life,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said of the interceptors. He told reporters Monday that he had contacted European partners financing Ukraine’s arms supplies to ask whether the Iran conflict would further restrict deliveries.
The biggest threat to Ukraine are Russia’s ballistic-missile strikes, and the only solution is the Patriot system, said Col. Pavlo Yelizarov , deputy chief of Ukraine’s air force. Russia is now able to produce around 80 ballistic missiles a month, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence.
Ukraine’s air force estimates it needs at least 60 PAC-3 interceptors a month just to keep pace with Russian ballistic-missile attacks. In February, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius urged European NATO partners to donate missiles to meet that requirement, following an impassioned plea by his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykhailo Fedorov . In a sign of how depleted NATO stockpiles have become, only five of these have been definitively pledged—by Germany.
The shortage of interceptors could endanger peace talks because Western security guarantees for Ukraine include strengthening Kyiv’s air defenses, according to European and Ukrainian negotiators.
Asked for comment, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly referred to the president’s public comments. In a Truth Social post, Trump blamed former President Joe Biden for giving Ukraine extensive supplies of high-end munitions, and likened Zelensky to the 19th-century circus promoter P.T. Barnum.
The Patriot system has been the gold standard of Western air defenses during four years of war in Ukraine. The sophisticated system is difficult for adversaries to destroy because it is spread out over a large area. Ukrainian operators have used Patriots to shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles, particularly as they slow on descent, surprising defense analysts who didn’t think the Patriot would be able to intercept such missiles.
Despite intense demand for the Patriot, production has increased only modestly. The system is produced by Raytheon, with interceptors manufactured by Lockheed Martin, which has expanded output to roughly 600 missiles annually. Lockheed said it is working to boost annual production up to 2,000 of those interceptors—by the end of 2030.
The company said it might stop ordering parts from some underperforming suppliers or find alternative companies that can produce the complex machinery needed to produce a missile that can track and disrupt an incoming projectile moving at several hundreds of miles an hour—a technical feat defense analysts liken to shooting a bullet with a bullet. RTX, whose Raytheon division produces the launcher unit itself, didn’t return a request for comment.
“Current production rates combined with recent expenditures doesn’t bode well for Ukraine’s growing air-defense needs,” said Michael Kofman , senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Part of the problem is industry reluctance to invest heavily in new production lines without guaranteed long-term government contracts, said Fabian Hoffmann , a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo.
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both acknowledged the strain this week.
Rubio told reporters the U.S. produces only “six or seven” interceptors a month, while Iran manufactures more than 100 missiles in the same period.
Germany, Ukraine’s largest European backer, ordered eight new Patriot systems in 2024 at roughly €2 billion apiece, equivalent to $2.33 billion, but has yet to receive even a provisional delivery date, German officials say.
Berlin has transferred most of its operational systems to Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank, leaving Germany itself thinly protected against aerial attack, officials acknowledge.
U.S. and NATO adversaries—including China, Russia and Iran—are closely tracking interceptor expenditures, according to intelligence and defense officials. Their military doctrines increasingly emphasize mass production of cheap drones and ballistic missiles designed to overwhelm Western stockpiles.
America and Europe made a major strategic error by failing to expand ground-based air-defense production earlier and at scale, said Nico Lange, a former senior German defense official. “They had four years to do it,” Lange said. “Now we are vulnerable and everyone knows it: The strategies of Russia, Iran and China have been redefined by the knowledge that we produce too little, too slow.”
The U.S. military has adapted its doctrine accordingly. Air defense is meant to buy time for offensive operations that neutralize enemy launch capabilities, said Colby Badhwar, a Canadian security analyst.
The U.S. and Israel are racing to destroy missile stockpiles and launchers before they saturate allied defenses, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated at a press conference Monday, describing the approach as “shooting the archer instead of the arrows.”
To mitigate shortages, Germany encouraged European missile maker MBDA in 2024 to establish joint Patriot interceptor production in Bavaria with Raytheon.
NATO countries have ordered 1,000 missiles, with deliveries expected to begin early next year, said MBDA spokesman Günter Abel. The company has committed €500 million to expand production capacity even before first deliveries, anticipating further demand.
One strategic miscalculation by the U.S. and Europe, Badhwar argued, was supplying Ukraine primarily with defensive systems while limiting long-range strike capabilities inside Russia.
Now, Ukraine has all but expended its defensive arsenal without neutralizing the Russian threat .
“U.S. and European decision makers lived in la-la-land in the last years and tried to argue that defensive weapons are enough,” Hoffmann said.
