“Halting of PAC-3 SME interceptors for Patriot is alarming — against the background of both the increase in ballistics production in Russia, and supplies from [North Korea] and the vulnerability of a bunch of large frontline cities to this,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies.
He added that the stoppage was “not OK,” because Ukraine could have survived for the next few years on assistance under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a U.S. program he said has contracted with manufacturers for about $35 billion in arms and ammunition.
The argument that the U.S. is running short of missile interceptors doesn’t hold water, said Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
While the U.S. has sent a considerable number of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine, it has replenished stocks through buyback schemes from Japan, and more recent shipments were diverted from export customers rather than the Pentagon’s own inventory, Kaushal said.
The U.S. produces about a dozen Patriot systems a year, and its production of PAC-3 interceptor missiles surged by about 30 percent last year to around 500. That means inventory stockpiles are not critically low.
“While precise numbers on stockpiles are not public, it is not necessarily the case that stockpiles of missiles such as PAC-3 have been significantly depleted in the sense of a significant reduction in absolute numbers,” said Kaushal.
