The United States will resume shipping Patriot air-defense missiles to Ukraine, US Pres. Donald Trump said on Saturday. “They’re going to need them for defense,” Trump said of the missiles. “They’re going to need something because they’re being hit pretty hard.”
Trump’s comments came a few days after news broke that a top US official, potentially US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, unilaterally froze the transfer of as many as 30 Patriot missiles that were already en route to Ukraine.
The Pentagon confirmed shipments of “defensive” weapons would resume.
Trump reversed the aid freeze one day after Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities endured one of the biggest Russian air raids in the 41 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine. Not coincidentally, Trump spoke to Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin around the same time—a conversation Trump said left him “unhappy.”
“He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people—it’s no good,” Trump said.
Russian forces launched 550 drones and missiles on Friday, according to the Ukrainian air force.
539 were Shahed drones. The raid also involved seven ballistic missiles and four cruise missiles. Ukrainian forces “neutralized” 478 of the munitions, the air force claimed. 268 Shaheds were shot down and another 208 flew off course, likely owing to Ukrainian radio jamming. The Ukrainians also downed two of the cruise missiles.
The ballistic missiles apparently got through, however. Those are the targets the Patriots are supposed to intercept.
After losing some launchers and radars to Russian missiles, Ukraine still has at least seven full Patriot batteries. The PAC-2 version of the Patriot missile weighs 900 kg, ranges as far as 160 km and costs $4 million per round. The Patriot is one of the few air-defense systems in the world that can reliably shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, which might travel thousands of meters per second—too fast for less sophisticated air defenses.
The Franco-Italian SAMP/T can also hit ballistic missiles, but Ukraine has just two SAMP/T batteries. And the Eurosam consortium builds Aster missiles for the batteries at a startling low rate: just 300 or so. By contrast, US missile-maker Lockheed Martin is completing nearly 1,000 Patriots annually.
Low missile inventory
How many of those missiles made their way to Ukraine is a secret. But it’s worth noting that the single shipment Hegseth or some other official froze included 30 missiles. And Germany has, for months, been trying to scrape together the financing to replace 100 Patriots it wants to donate to Ukraine from its existing stocks, adding to the 350 or so it has already sent.
It’s possible that, in the two years since Ukraine received its first Patriot batteries—entire batteries or parts of them have come from the United States, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Norway and Romania—the Ukrainian air force has also received around 1,000 missiles for those batteries.
The air force has fired some Patriots at Russian warplanes as part of elaborate surface-to-air ambushes, but tends to save them for strictly defensive missions swatting down ballistic missiles barreling toward Kyiv and other cities.
It might take more than one Patriot round to intercept a single Russian missile. The Ukrainian air force claimed it shot down 22 Russian ballistic missiles in June. That may have required 50 Patriot missiles.
The math is unforgiving. It’s possible Ukraine has already fired 1,000 Patriots—meaning it has practically no missiles in reserve. The Ukrainians launch the missiles almost as fast as they take delivery of them.
Unless and until Europe can expand production of Aster missiles or Ukraine can develop its own long-range air-defense system, the Patriots are the Ukrainians’ main defenses against the most damaging Russian munitions. When Trump said “they’re going to need them,” he wasn’t exaggerating.