American Patriots must be replaced in the war for Ukraine

A US-made Patriot missile launches during a live fire exercise. Patriots are a vital part of Ukraine's air defences
A US-made Patriot missile launches during a live fire exercise. Patriots are a vital part of Ukraine’s air defences - Sam Yeh/AFP

Ukraine’s American-made Patriots are its best air defences. Ranging as far as 100 miles under radar guidance, a Patriot battery’s missiles – weighing up to a ton – can intercept aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.

The Ukrainian air force has deployed its six $1-billion Patriot batteries for complex ambushes targeting Russian warplanes – and also to defend Ukrainian cities from Russia’s best Iskander and Kinzhal missiles.

But the supply of missiles for the Patriot batteries is in trouble – and Kyiv should plan for the worst. US President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated in January, has said he’d let the Russians do “whatever the Hell they want” in European Nato nations which didn’t pay their fair share for their own defence.

Trump’s cabinet picks are mostly opposed to further US aid to Ukraine. Ominously, Trump invited billionaire Elon Musk, a top Trump donor and known opponent of US aid to Ukraine, to join him on a post-election phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

If, as expected, Trump cuts off US aid to Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force could run out of Patriot missiles – and fast. Given industrial and political constraints, it’s likely Ukraine maintains a very small stockpile of Patriot rounds, and fires them nearly as fast as it receives them.

Raytheon in the United States builds most of the roughly 500 Patriot missiles that are produced every year. Japanese and European firms are setting up additional facilities for licenced assembly of the missiles that should boost production to 1,000 rounds a year by 2027.

None of the Patriot plants can legally export missiles to Ukraine without permission from the US government. By withholding this licence, the Trump administration can strangle Ukraine’s best air defences, making the country even more vulnerable than it already is to relentless Russian bombardment.

Kyiv needs a backup air-defence plan in the event Patriot missiles are no longer available after January. And that backup plan shouldn’t depend on some other American-made – or even mostly American-made – missile system, such as the HAWK or NASAMS.

Ukraine should look to Europe – and expect a lot of complications. There’s just one European surface-to-air missile system that more or less matches Patriot’s capabilities and whose builders could, with some effort, circumvent US export restrictions: the $500-million Sol-Air Moyenne Portée/Terrestre, or SAMP/T, a product of the Franco-Italian Eurosam consortium.

Ukraine already has one SAMP/T battery plus another on the way and would need five more to replace its Patriots – plus additional copies if it also has to replace other American-made systems.

But there’s a problem. As limited as the supply of Patriot batteries and missiles is, the supply of SAMP/Ts and their Aster missiles is even more constrained.

Italy has three SAMP/T batteries and, in September, ordered an additional 10 batteries built to an upgraded standard; France has eight older SAMP/Ts and ordered eight of the upgraded batteries in September. The French expect to wait as long as two years for the first new battery – a sign of just how much the European air-defence industrial base struggles against stiff American competition.

However slow they are coming off the production line, SAMP/Ts might be Ukraine’s only hope for a sustained defence against Russian warplanes and missiles. Eurosam would have its work cut out for it, however.

While the consortium has pitched the SAMP/T as the air-defence solution for countries hoping for autonomy over their defence decision-making, it’s likely that the SAMP/T includes some American-made parts – and those would be subject to American export controls. Advanced Western weapons which aren’t governed by America’s International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) are rare, and always advertised as “ITAR free”: this is not the case at present for SAMP/T. To transfer SAMP/Ts to Ukraine without US consent, Eurosam would have to replace any ITAR components with non-American ones.

There are good reasons to expect the consortium would work hard to do so, however. France has previously stated that it de-ITARised a different weapon, the SCALP cruise missile (aka Storm Shadow in British hands) in order to sell it to Egypt in the face of US objections. France has also proposed a frigate for sale to Indonesia, armed with the same Aster missiles as SAMP/T, with a guarantee that the whole ship would be ITAR-free: so it seems clear that France thinks ITAR-free Aster missile systems are feasible.

In the end, air defence in the Trump era could be a European problem as much as it is a Ukrainian one. If and when Trump cuts ties between the United States and its Nato allies, Europe will need to figure out how to defend itself – and how to help Ukraine defend itself, too. It will need to build a lot more air defences, fast and on its own.