The logic was straightforward enough. Kyiv urgently needed to replenish the Patriot missiles that remain its only reliable defense against Russian ballistic strikes, a shortfall showing no sign of easing.
Washington, in turn, is confronting a tactic it was never quite prepared for. Iran and the militias it backs have learned to overwhelm expensive, modern air defense systems by sheer weight of numbers, flooding the skies with cheap missiles and drones. The result: America's own scarce, costly interceptors are being burned through at an inefficient rate. The price of a single PAC-3 averages roughly $4m, and its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, can produce only 650 a year.
Ukraine's own electronic warfare assets, among them stationary and mobile drone jammers, can be used again and again. Its interceptor drones, domestically produced four-rotor first-person-view (FPV) Sting models built to bring down Shaheds, cost roughly $2,100 apiece, against more than €30,000 ($35,000) for an Iranian-made Shahed.
In March, Zelensky and his team even toured Arab capitals to sell their drone expertise. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, all under heavy fire from Tehran at the time, took up the offer, pouring billions of petrodollars into Ukrainian production capacity in return. Jordan welcomed the same battle-hardened instructors, though it did not become a target of the Revolutionary Guard until July. Quietly, Ukraine's president is offsetting waning American and European support with fresh backing from the Arab world.
A Solution Still Under Construction
Ukrainian intelligence says the Kremlin is also drawing on North Korean firepower, moving a missile unit, expected to field 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers, into western Russia, even as Kyiv receives fewer and fewer weapons from its allies to defend against precisely this kind of attack.
On the same day the intelligence findings emerged, Zelensky said allies had supplied Ukraine with only a third as many air defense missiles in 2026 as in 2025, a shortfall he called woefully inadequate against the scale of Russia's missile campaign. For now, experts say, Kyiv's best hope lies in relentlessly hunting down the enemy's launchers before they fire.
Talks continue, but having initially signaled a positive decision, President Donald Trump has so far ruled out granting Kyiv a license to manufacture Patriot systems on Ukrainian soil.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian leader announced on social media a new air defense missile initiative. The FREYJA Anti-Ballistic Missile Program is a multinational European effort, and by early August ten countries had joined.
Zelensky expects results between 2026 and 2027, and the first missile tests already took place in June, but mass production and deployment of Freyja missiles on the battlefield remain well out of sight.
The summer has brought fresh strain elsewhere too. Russian attacks on gas stations classed as critical infrastructure rose sharply, apparently in retaliation for Ukraine's own strikes on Russian oil facilities. Attacks on civilian targets are climbing too: July set a monthly record, with close to 400 people killed.
The Blame Game Behind America's Missile Shortage
The shortage of high-precision American munitions was evident well before the 2026 Iran war began, as General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned at the time. Yet civilian officials appear not to have grasped how quickly stockpiles were emptying until the two-week air campaign over the Islamic Republic drew to a close, a realization that reportedly triggered a falling-out last week.
Sources within the administration told The Washington Post that Trump, believing the ammunition question "had been fixed", confronted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at a Friday meeting at Camp David, demanding to know why he felt misled and kept in the dark about the shortage, according to two officials who witnessed the exchange. The reckoning came just three days after Trump had called off a strike he had promised would be "the biggest attack since World War II".
The Washington Post had previously reported that in the war's opening month alone, American forces fired more than 850 Tomahawk missiles and over 1,000 Patriot or THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptors. In the first few weeks, more than 1,300 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) rounds were also expended, leaving stocks of the short-range missile, in the words of one source, "drained to the extent that there's basically none left".
That account echoed reporting from Reuters, which had already flagged the severity of the shortage earlier in the week. Beyond ATACMS, the US has likely also exhausted much of its supply of high-precision Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). Sources cited by the Post said Hegseth pushed back against Trump's criticism, pinning the failure to keep the president informed on his deputy, Stephen Feinberg.
Hegseth himself belongs to the camp of hawkish advisers who persuaded Trump that a war with Iran would be a "quick and relatively easy win". Even so, in a request to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon has sought an additional $67bn in funding, part of which would go toward replenishing depleted stockpiles.
Kyiv's own forces have relied on ATACMS since October 2023, and by March 2025 had already exhausted their entire allocation. With American stockpiles now similarly bare, a resumption of deliveries looks unlikely, and Kyiv may soon find itself facing the same fate with Patriot missiles.
