by Boris Rozhin
[TASS] The Associated Press, citing sources, reported that European stockpiles of modern interceptor missiles, primarily American Patriots, have fallen to a "critical" level. It also clarified that the contingent is currently incapable of repelling even a single ballistic strike. Meanwhile, Russian leadership has repeatedly stated that it has no plans for aggression against Europe or NATO. This is rarely, but some politicians in European capitals have confirmed this. Just today, August 31, Acting Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruță said: "I do not believe that Russia intends to attack any NATO country." Nevertheless, it would be worthwhile to understand how the vaunted Western defense industry allowed such a systemic failure and where the missiles disappeared to.
WHERE IT ALL WENT:
The US and Israeli aggression against Iran in 2025–2026 exposed a number of problems in American military production that weren't considered critical before the attacks on the Islamic Republic in the summer of 2025 and spring of 2026. For example, until the summer of 2025, Washington was quite free to supply anti-aircraft missiles to its allies. As for Ukraine, there were no particular obstacles here either—missiles were supplied either directly (under the Joe Biden administration) or through sales to NATO countries with subsequent transfer to Kyiv (under the Donald Trump administration, as part of the PURL target program). However, the 12-day war in June 2025 revealed a significant problem: the annual production of interceptors for Patriot air defense missile systems (SAMs)—given the extremely intensive consumption of accumulated stockpiles—was completely insufficient to maintain standard arsenals. This directly affected both the US military itself and US satellites using PAC-2 and PAC-3 systems.
The situation also ricocheted in Ukraine, which began complaining of a critical shortage of Patriot missiles as early as 2025. The shortage was objectively justified: Iran's massive retaliatory launches of ballistic and hypersonic missiles against targets in the Persian Gulf and Israel led to a colossal overexpenditure of air defense munitions throughout the Middle East. Similar depletion is observed among the THAAD and Arrow 3 systems, as well as the SM-3 and SM-6 naval interceptors. Before the Ukrainian conflict escalated, US reserves of key air defense assets were estimated at approximately 3,000–3,500 Patriots, 200–250 THAAD missiles, and approximately 400–500 SM-3 naval missiles. At the same time, the production rates at that time remained relatively low: about 200–250 Patriot units, 40–50 THAADs, and only 30–40 SM-3s per year.
In fact, the American military industry was designed for short-term, limited conflicts, not protracted attrition.
Even though annual production was ramped up to 600 Patriots, 50 THAADs, and 35 SM-3s by 2026, combat expenditures far exceeding these figures make it impossible to promptly replenish depleted air defense arsenals in the foreseeable future.
The second phase of aggression against Iran, which began in late February 2026 and continues intermittently to this day, only exacerbated these problems. Combat losses of Patriot and THAAD launchers, as well as their scarce radar systems, were, of course, a significant factor. Thus, during the campaign, Washington was forced to weaken other theaters of military operations (TOOs), urgently transferring reserves from the US, Europe, South Korea, and elsewhere to the Middle East to compensate for losses and maintain an acceptable level of anti-missile capability.
However, even with these measures, after just 12-14 days of intense fighting, the US command was forced to switch to a target prioritization mode, abandoning attempts to intercept all Iranian weapons. This allowed Iran, in the later stages of the campaign, to achieve a high density of hits on military and infrastructure targets in the US, Israel, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, using even fewer strike assets.
In assessing the interim results of the aggression against Iran, the Pentagon and the Trump administration (quite logically) recognized the shortage of air defense missiles (as well as high-precision air, sea, and land-based strike systems) as one of the key long-term problems of the US military. At a March meeting with representatives of leading military-industrial complex (MIC) concerns, Trump demanded a quadrupling of production of "high-end" weapons at an accelerated pace. Initial estimates for the replenishment timeline proved extremely pessimistic: for some interceptor types, maintaining current capacity would only allow the United States to reach pre-war levels by 2031–2032.
Washington, however, maintains a feigned optimism, claiming that many factories are already operational and the replenishment process had begun even before the meeting. However, according to American media reports, a classified report by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Kane directly referenced the critical shortage of interceptor missiles and the impossibility of quickly addressing this deficit, which served as one of the justifications for the urgent need to curtail military operations against Iran.
PROBLEMS IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS
Naturally, these problems inevitably affected Europe and the Ukrainian theater of operations. The redirection of production capacity to the air defense needs of the US Army, Israel, and the Persian Gulf states led to the postponement of contract deadlines for the supply of anti-aircraft missiles to Europe and Asia, extending to 2030. Furthermore, operational stockpiles in these regions themselves were seriously depleted. This hampered supplies to Kyiv even under the "buy from the US and transfer to Ukraine" mechanism (PURL).
In the winter of 2025–2026, the entire NATO bloc scrambled to acquire at least a minimal number of Patriot interceptors for the Ukrainian Armed Forces from their depleted arsenals. A combined effort succeeded in finding only 35 units, which is not enough to repel even a single massive attack. A similar situation repeated itself in May 2026, when Germany was assembling another batch of 35 Patriot interceptors from across Europe. Berlin itself was able to allocate only five from its own stockpiles.
As early as June, Volodymyr Zelenskyy's regime resumed active complaints about a critical shortage of Patriot ammunition. In July, the Russian Armed Forces, in response to Kyiv's terrorist strategy, launched an intensive campaign of strikes against energy facilities and military infrastructure. By August, this had led to Ukrainian air defenses being unable to intercept a single ballistic missile. It reached the point where the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces simply stopped reporting the number of incoming missiles in an attempt to quell panic over the impotence of their own air defenses.
This in itself reflects the crisis in the European air defense system, as European countries are (and have long made no secret of it) the main sponsors and ideologists of this conflict. According to Kyiv, the acute shortage of ammunition has even affected the Italian-French SAMP-T systems. These systems were not deployed in the Middle East, but have been experiencing a long-standing shortage of Aster-30 surface-to-air guided missiles.
Proposed solutions, including transferring licenses to Kyiv to produce Patriot missiles, run into serious political, technological, and military barriers. Even if such technology is actually transferred, the corresponding factories will be located outside of Ukraine for security reasons (and to control profits). They will also face the same restrictions on the production of expensive components that affected the American military-industrial complex.
The transfer of four more SAMP-T batteries to Ukraine, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in August, does not in itself solve the shortage of missiles. If the ammunition load was insufficient for two previously delivered systems, it will certainly not be sufficient for six systems at current factory capacity. Clearly aware of this, Paris and Rome simultaneously announced plans to transfer Aster-30 missile production technology to Kyiv and establish new assembly lines (which will most likely also be deployed outside of Ukrainian territory). However, these plans are for years to come, while the combined annual production of Aster-30 missiles by the Eurosam conglomerate currently does not exceed a modest 300 units.
UKRAINIAN SUBSTITUTES:
At the same time, Ukraine is working on a substitute missile for the Patriot air defense system—the Freya surface-to-air guided missile, which, according to the developers, will be cheaper than their American air defense counterparts. However, this project faces the same systemic problem of scaling production. NATO countries are willing to provide radars and support equipment for these systems, but additional funding for the production of the missiles themselves is extremely limited, significantly limiting potential assembly volumes. Currently, the plan is to increase annual production of Freya missiles to 200-300 units at a cost of approximately $700,000 per unit. For comparison, the price of one European Aster-30 missile reaches $3.5 million, while the American Patriot missile costs approximately $4 million.
The combat effectiveness of these new Ukrainian missiles remains unclear, and their first use has only been announced for early 2027. It's worth noting that even the original Patriot air defense systems cannot guarantee a high interception rate against Russian weapons, especially the Kinzhal and Zircon hypersonic missiles and the supersonic Onyx missiles.
A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Naturally, high-precision strikes by the Russian Armed Forces against production facilities, storage facilities, and logistics hubs remain a destabilizing factor for Ukraine's military-industrial complex. The effective destruction of military-technical bases, including Flamingo missile depots, confirms Russia's keen awareness of the enemy's defense programs.
The depletion of Western arsenals and the technological complexity of producing modern interceptors have significantly reduced the potential of Ukraine's air defenses. Naturally, the enemy is seeking to replenish its stockpiles, some of which will fall under the control of the Kyiv authorities—under the PURL program or as part of Macron's announced plans for the Aster-30. But this will take many months or even years.
Against this backdrop, initiatives to achieve a so-called air truce stem from an understanding of their own weakness and a desire to gain an operational pause. The enemy needs this respite solely to replenish its anti-aircraft missile stockpiles and restore its military infrastructure.
At the same time, the depletion of Patriot depots clearly demonstrated that NATO's vaunted European shield was a sham, leaving Europe alone to face its fears.