US Patriots run out and compromise the wars in Ukraine and Iran

WashingtonIn February 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House after Donald Trump returned to power to guarantee American military support. It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders after the Republican regained the presidency in the US and also a time when Patriot missiles, crucial for defense against Russian attacks, were already beginning to be scarce in Kyiv. That day Trump berated Zelensky, telling him he had no cards. What the leader perhaps did not imagine was that, a year and a half later, he would find himself in a similar situation: the Pentagon is having trouble resupplying its Patriot missiles.

Zelensky is running out of Patriots because Russia has intensified its air attacks, taking advantage of the fact that Washington has not sent any other arms package for months. On the other hand, Trump is running out of interceptors because he is consuming them in Iran at a much higher rate than his capacity to produce new ones. In fact, this was one of the risks that led to advising the US president to did not start any conflict with Tehran. Doing so could involve accelerating the reduction of the country's already depleted military arsenal.

Six months after that warning, the Pentagon's predictions have come true: in early August, sources from the Department of Defense leaked to the US media that the army had already consumed 80% of its anti-missile reserves in Iran. Specifically, the ammunition for THAAD and Patriot interceptors. The shortage of arsenal in the US could not have come at a worse time for Zelensky. This week he said in an interview with CNN that he only needs a tenth of all the Patriots he "urgently" requests from Washington to be able to defend himself from Russia.

The plea comes after the US president dashed the Ukrainian's hopes of being able to manufacture Patriots in Kyiv himself. During the NATO summit, Trump let slip that he was considering giving Ukraine the technology license so it could be self-sufficient. A permit that Zelensky has been pursuing for months, but the prospect of obtaining it collapsed again when at the end of July the Republican went back on his word.

Although for Zelensky it was a setback the change of opinion of Trump about the Patriots, having obtained permission would not have changed anything in the short term. Manufacturing a single Patriot missile requires millions of dollars and, at least, a year of work. This, in fact, is the big problem that Trump has right now. The seriousness of having so quickly exhausted the Pentagon's critical arsenal in Iran lies in the fact that it cannot be replenished immediately. Ultimately, Zelensky and Trump are trapped on the same side of the river: both at the mercy of a structural weakness of the US arms industry that cannot be solved in two days. But, in the meantime, Russia and Iran continue to advance on their respective fronts.

Pressure on arms manufacturers

The manufacturing time for Patriots is becoming the United States' biggest bottleneck on both main fronts, and it has no simple solution. The situation is also causing tension between the military and the White House, as it is a scenario that the Trump administration was already trying to prepare for. At the beginning of the year, the US government had already sounded out car manufacturers to see if they could also help accelerate arms production, and the president had already met with the heads of the main US arms industries to ask them to speed up manufacturing.

The urgency for the arms industry to speed up production has only increased, while the reserves of anti-aircraft missiles have been decreasing. This very week, the "Washington Post" published a memorandum from the Department of Defense giving the country's main arms manufacturers twenty-one days to present their plans to "more aggressively increase delivery schedules or increase production of critical capabilities". In the text, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg adds: "Development cycles that take years are not acceptable. We must drastically accelerate the timelines of our programs and expand our production capacity now".

Threats turn out to be a futile effort against a reality much more difficult to change. The long production times for the weapons that sustain the country's military supremacy, including the Patriots, are a deep-seated problem. In the early 2000s, George Bush's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, already warned that the weapons that constituted the central pillar of American military supremacy required years to be built and, consequently, he called for investment in a new generation of weapons that would represent "75% of the solutions" but could be manufactured faster and at a lower cost.

Now, 26 years later, Iran's Shahed drones exploit this reality both in the Middle East and on the Ukrainian front. Much cheaper and faster to produce, they force THAAD and Patriot defense systems to fire at full throttle.

The prospect that the US can replenish its pre-war ammunition reserves with Iran is not encouraging. The US manufactures about 600 Patriot missiles per year, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that it has already spent more than 1,500 during the seven months of conflict with Iran. Another CSIS study predicts that it could take at least until mid-2029 to recover pre-war stock levels. Meanwhile, the arsenals of Washington and Kyiv are only decreasing with each passing day.