The anti-ballistic missile shortage
In six months of on-again, off-again fighting with Iran, the United States has effectively exhausted its supply of heavy air defence interceptors. These are the only interceptors that have any ability to shoot down the most dangerous enemy munitions: ballistic missiles.
Since the US supplies – or supplied – most of the West’s heavy interceptors, the shortage isn’t just an American problem; it’s a global one.
The solution is global, too. America’s allies must work together, and fast, to produce alternatives to the US Patriot and Thaad air defence systems. Ukraine is leading the way with a joint Ukrainian-German interceptor design. Now other countries must follow.
If they don’t, they could be exposed to devastating ballistic missile bombardment in the event of a major war. It’s already happening in Ukraine, where a deepening missile shortage for the country’s half-dozen or so donated Patriot batteries means Russia can now essentially bombard cities and power plants at will.
Ukraine’s only other air defence system with any significant anti-ballistic missile capability is its two Franco-Italian SAMP/T batteries, which are themselves desperately low on missiles.
The US went to war with Iran with a limited inventory of missiles for its 60 Patriot and eight Thaad batteries. The Patriot’s latest PAC-3 radar-guided interceptor can hit incoming ballistic missiles around 50 km up. The Thaad’s infrared-guided interceptor can hit missiles 150 km up. A PAC-3 round costs around US$4 million, a Thaad round around US$12 million.
Before the first US and Israeli bombs dropped on Iran in February, the Pentagon had around 360 missiles for its Thaad batteries and around 2,300 missiles for its Patriot batteries, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
In six months of sporadic fighting, US forces fired as many as 290 missiles from Thaad batteries and as many as 1,430 from Patriot batteries, potentially leaving just 70 rounds left for Thaad and 870 for Patriot. This is far too few to protect US and allied bases during, say, a major war with China.
‘We don’t have enough munitions to sustain a long-term fight,’ warned Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican who chairs the US House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee.
The Pentagon is paying Lockheed Martin and Raytheon tens of billions of dollars to ramp up production of Thaad and Patriot rounds, respectively. But it takes 42 months to produce a missile for Patriot and 53 to produce one for Thaad.
It should go without saying that, in the years it’ll take for the United States to replenish its anti-ballistic interceptor stocks, US allies who depend on Patriot or Thaad for ballistic defence will go without fresh rounds. Who will defend against Iranian, Russian or Chinese ballistic missiles, and how?
The SAMP/T and its US$3 million Aster missiles, which can hit ballistic targets as high as 25 km, are also in short supply. And Eurosam, the Franco–Italian venture behind the missiles, isn’t exactly scurrying to boost output. France gave Ukraine the license to produce its own Aster missiles, but it’s telling that Kyiv’s priorities seem to lie elsewhere.
In an ambitious move for a small power, Ukraine is developing its own mostly domestic anti-ballistic missile system under the Freya initiative. Kyiv munitions maker Fire Point is taking its FP-7 surface-to-surface ballistic missile and adding an infrared seeker made by German company Diehl, transforming the missile into a missile-interceptor.
Fire Point is moving fast. It announced the FP-7.x in July 2026 and aims to test it against a ballistic target by July 2027. ‘We are trying to squeeze a program that usually takes 20 to 30 years into a framework of a few years,’ Fire Point chief executive Iryna Terekh said.
Whether it’ll work is anyone’s guess. Hitting a missile with a missile is one of the more demanding missions in modern warfare. Fire Point can lean on Ukrainian industry’s legacy of making rockets and missiles for the Soviet Union; indeed, the FP-7.x seems to derive from missiles associated with the old Soviet S-300 air defense system. But the quality, price and supply of those German seekers may make all the difference.
All the same, it’s a blueprint. Any country that can produce a manoeuvrable rocket, pack it with a radar or infrared seeker and integrate it with a ground-based search radar should be able to make anti-ballistic interceptors mostly on its own or with a few allies.
Maybe these homegrown interceptors won’t quite match the accuracy of a Patriot or Thaad missile, but maybe they won’t have to. Most Patriot operators assume they’ll need to fire two multi-million-dollar interceptors to reliably hit one ballistic target. If Fire Point can deliver the FP-7.x at US$700,000 per round, as it claimed it would, Ukraine could conceivably buy thousands of them (on its own or with allied financial assistance) and blast away at Russian missiles.
Ukraine’s urgency, and willingness to risk failure, is understandable. Every ballistic impact in Kyiv, Odesa or Kharkiv is an argument for extreme measures.
But the defencelessness that’s driving Ukraine to develop its own anti-ballistic defences is becoming a worldwide problem as the American missile shield shatters for want of ammunition. Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Australia must be able to defend themselves against Chinese missiles. The Gulf states, against Iranian missiles. Europe, against Russian missiles.
There’s no reason there shouldn’t be a multi-national Asian missile-defence initiative, a Gulf initiative or another European initiative in addition to Freya – multiple alternatives now that the Americans can’t be counted on to protect the sky.
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