“We are gonna give you a licence to make Patriots.” Donald Trump said it to Volodymyr Zelensky across a table at the NATO summit in Ankara, and added: “I think they can produce them very quickly once we explain it.”
Trump admitted he had not yet told Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the manufacturers, but said “that’ll work out alright”. He said the licence would stop Kyiv from complaining that the US was not giving it enough.
Why Kyiv wants it
Patriots detect and intercept missiles, and they are regarded as one of the world’s best air defence systems. They are also the most expensive: one battery, with missiles, costs around $1 billion. Production is slow. The US Department of Defense puts output at only 600 missiles a year, while Responsible Statecraft puts it at about 650, with plans to reach roughly 2,000 by 2030.
Ukraine has learned to counter the hundreds of drones Russia fires nightly, but ballistic missiles, which Zelensky called Russia’s “last major advantage,” move fast on a steep path and are hard to stop. In the week before Trump spoke, Russian ballistic strikes killed dozens in Kyiv alone. The Ukraine Air Force said a “serious shortage” of interceptors meant that none of 23 ballistic missiles fired on a Sunday night was shot down. More than 20 people died. Zelensky had confirmed in late May that Ukraine formally asked Washington to authorise licensed production.
Supply is the problem on the American side too. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says the US used more than half its Patriot stockpile in its war with Iran earlier this year. “We have Patriots, but we don’t have that many,” Trump said. “We need them for ourselves too.”
Can Ukraine build them?
Doubters are not hard to find. Ivan Stupak, a military expert and former security service officer, told the BBC that Ukraine cannot make munitions this advanced. “Technically and legally, I think this will be deployed to European soil instead – and supervised,” he said, adding that the process could take many months. “We have no safe place on the entire Ukrainian territory.”
Responsible Statecraft argued the licence is a bad idea. A Ukrainian line would face Russian missiles, it said, and the work would likely be assembly from imported parts, which would draw components away from existing lines. Germany’s planned Patriot GEM-T plant, agreed in early 2024, is expected to be finished only by the end of 2026, with full-rate production no earlier than 2028. The outlet also warned of technology leaks, since Germany and Japan, the two countries with co-production licences, had to meet strict security and end-use rules.
Sources
- Trump says Ukraine will get licence to produce Patriot missiles
- Ukraine wants to make its own Patriot missiles. That's a bad idea.
