Ukraine has only one way to protect itself against Russia’s most powerful ballistic missiles – US-made Patriot defense systems. With the United States now pausing military shipments to Kyiv, they could soon run out of ammo.
Kyiv and its allies are scrambling to come up with a plan after US President Donald Trump suspended military shipments to Ukraine on Monday, following his heated Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky last week.
The move may well have devastating consequences for Ukraine. However, much of the American military equipment that is used by the Ukrainians on the battlefield can be sourced elsewhere, produced domestically or replaced with alternatives – although there are serious questions about whether Ukraine’s allies could ever afford to match what the US was providing.
“The US holds the licensing to the Patriot missile systems, and also the missile production for them, which makes it very challenging for multiple European countries to recreate these,” said Kateryna Stepanenko, the Russia deputy team lead and analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor.
The Patriots are the crème de la crème of the equipment provided by the US to Ukraine and they play a crucial role in Ukraine’s air defenses.
So the risk of losing them has sent Ukrainian officials into panic.
“This is the only system capable of dealing with Russian ballistic missiles. The risk relates to the provision of Patriots, both in terms of repairs, maintenance and ammunition to protect Ukraine from ballistic missiles,” the country’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Tuesday.
“We can destroy all other means of Russia’s terrorization of Ukraine with what we have in Ukraine, manufactured here or received from our partners,” Shmyhal added.
Russia has been launching waves of ballistic and cruise missiles towards Ukraine on regular basis, and been striking cities, energy infrastructure and civilian targets weekly. Last summer, it deployed a cruise missile to strike a children’s hospital in Kyiv.
Ballistic missiles follow a curved trajectory that takes them out of the Earth’s atmosphere, before plunging back into the atmosphere and onto its target. They travel at extremely high speeds, which makes them very difficult to intercept.
Cruise missiles meanwhile are unmanned vehicles that are propelled by jet engines, much like an airplane, and can be launched from ground, air, or sea. They are hard to detect because they tend to be smaller and fly low, and some can also travel at high speeds.
At the same time, Moscow has been increasing its stockpiles at a rate Ukraine cannot keep up with. Russia is manufacturing more munitions while also procuring them from allies such as Iran and North Korea.
It is unclear how many missiles Ukraine has in its stockpiles and whether more supplies were already on the way from the US.
Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines were also quick to point out the Patriots as a key piece of equipment that Ukraine cannot afford to lose.
“Our weakness is in air-defense missiles – the Patriots,” said Yegor Firsov, the chief sergeant of a drone strike platoon. “Even we, the military, would like to have our families, our rear, protected as much as possible when we are serving on the frontline,” he said.
Effective defense at a huge cost
While they have been in use for nearly 40 years, the Patriots are widely considered to be among the best air defense systems. They are capable of bringing down cruise and hypersonic missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and aircraft.
Their effectiveness makes the Patriots a key target for Moscow – the Russian military has targeted the systems several times.
Zelensky said in the past that Ukraine would need some 25 Patriot systems to defend its airspace effectively.
It has roughly half a dozen at the moment, although the exact numbers and their locations are closely guarded secrets.
The US was initially reluctant to provide Ukraine with the Patriots, only agreeing to it after months of near-daily Russian aerial attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets.
The first batteries arrived in Ukraine some 14 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and they have since become an integral part of Ukraine’s air defenses.
Ukrainian officials have previously said the country received three systems from the US, one from Germany, one from the Netherlands and one from Romania.
More than a dozen other countries are known to have Patriot batteries, including Greece, Saudi Arabia, Poland and South Korea, but they have been reluctant to send them to Ukraine because of the threats they themselves are facing.
Analysts say that the Ukrainian military has been using the Patriots in an extremely effective way, shooting down missiles that Moscow claimed were impossible to intercept, such as the Kinzhal ballistic missiles.
But this comes at a huge cost.
At an estimated cost of about $1.1 billion for each system, the Patriots are by far the most expensive piece of equipment sent by allies to Ukraine.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies said that missile rounds for the Patriot come in at roughly $4 million each – an incredibly high price tag.
There are some alternative systems – such as NASAMS and IRIS-T which have proved effective against cruise missiles and drones – but they cannot match the Patriots when it comes to protection against advanced hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
A weapon that could potentially replace the Patriot is the SAMP/T air defense system made by Eurosam, a European manufacturer. Ukraine would need many more of these systems for them to be as effective as the Patriots and there are currently major supply issues with the SAMP/T.
Resolving supply issues will be key if Europe is to step in and provide Ukraine with more aid. While the Patriots are the key systems Ukraine is most worried about in the short term, the sheer size and breadth of the aid that was coming from the US means other problems will likely arise soon.
The US had been providing Ukraine with artillery ammunition, armored vehicles, howitzers and missile systems such as HIMARS and ATACMS.
“If you think about those M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored fighting vehicles, which had been very useful on the front line, if the Ukrainians run out of stocks or spare parts, then even when something relatively minor breaks down – and these things do need a lot of maintenance and break down a lot – then they’ll actually have to be pulled out of the line,” he added.
According to the Kiel Institute, which monitors aid to Ukraine, the military supplies that have been coming from Europe are comparable to those from the US.
Zelensky has said that domestic production covers roughly 30% of Ukraine’s needs.