The emerging geopolitics of missile interceptors

At the NATO summit in Ankara last month, Donald Trump said that the U.S. was going to grant Ukraine a license to make Patriot missile interceptors on its own soil. Although it would probably be at least two years until the missiles started rolling off the production lines, this move would make a significant contribution to Ukraine’s security. It’s not just that it would give Kyiv more sorely needed interceptors for the current conflict. Having a stronger defense industrial base would also make Ukraine stronger in the future - part of the so-called “porcupine strategy” intended to turn the country into a less inviting target for military attack down the line.

Now, Trump has walked back that decision, suggesting that the U.S. likely may not let Ukraine produce Patriots after all. In this post, I’m going to dive into why missile interceptors are such a hot topic right now, and what to make of this reversal.

The new interceptor wars

If it seems like there’s a lot of news about missile interceptors flying around right now then that’s because, well, there are a lot of missile interceptors themselves flying around right now. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown that drone and missile defense is an increasingly important part of modern warfare.

These wars have also shown that one of the effects that modern drones and missiles seem to have is that they prolong conflicts. The war in Ukraine has settled down into a grinding war of attrition in part because modern drone technology makes taking and holding territory extremely costly. And the war in Iran has shown that a drone and missile arsenal gives a country like Tehran an extremely robust, survivable way to keep inflicting costs on its opponents even after absorbing a huge amount of damage.

And herein lies the problem. Before the war in Iran started, U.S. stocks of missile interceptors were only sufficient to last for a short, sharp conflict. This was partly a result of a strategic assumption which said that the U.S. would quickly overwhelm any opponent. It was also, perhaps more than anyone wants to admit, the result of muddled and unfocused thinking, a consequence of the tendency to plan for the last war rather than the next one.

Nowadays, though, everybody knows that the U.S. and its allies need more missile interceptors. The war with Iran has depleted U.S. stocks massively and simultaneously reduced the supply to Ukraine. Interceptor shortages are already dictating U.S. strategy towards Iran. Any future conflict in the Pacific or Europe will require herculean quantities of them. It’s time to do something about this problem.

Possible solutions

One possible solution is for the U.S. to ramp up production domestically. Missile interceptors take a long time to manufacture, and production capacity is limited. The U.S. government needs to pledge large sums of money to get suppliers to build out new capacity, but an ongoing defense budget deadlock in Congress has caused delays. Since the war with Iran started, not a single new dollar has been appropriated by Congress to replace expended interceptors. The war is approaching its six month point, and nothing is being done to address one of its most serious consequences.

Another solution is innovation. Various companies and governments around the world are trying to create cheaper interceptors which are quicker to manufacture. In the U.S., Lockheed Martin has unveiled a cheaper version of the Patriot which it says will take flight in 2028.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has developed its own missile interceptor called the Freyja, after the Norse goddess who supposedly receives half of those who die in battle. A coalition of European countries are now working to dramatically ramp up Freyja production, which is easier to do than with the more complex Patriots. Separately, European defense companies have begun work on Bliksem EXO, another type of interceptor designed to stop targets outside the atmosphere.

Another solution is for the U.S. to decentralize Patriot production elsewhere, allowing other countries to make the most advanced interceptors. And that brings us back to Trump’s Ukraine reversal.

The U.S. government considers the Patriot system to be a national security secret - one of a number of very advanced technologies whose design and manufacture is closely guarded. As a result, if Lockheed Martin wants to make Patriots in another country, then it needs a license from the U.S. government. That license is only going to be granted in cases where Washington feels extremely confident that starting production in another country is not going to lead Patriot technology to fall into the wrong hands.

This causes something of a tension. On the one hand, it would be great if Lockheed Martin could draw on the skilled workforces, infrastructure and investment capital of other countries in order to make interceptors faster. Putting production in various countries also reduces risks from cyber-attacks, war, or other unforeseen events. In fact, given that the U.S. is being dramatically out-competed in advanced manufacturing by China, it makes a lot of sense for the U.S. and its allies to pool their industrial capacity to try to close the gap. I wrote an academic piece about this with my co-author Catherine Wood last year.

On the other hand, Washington wants to guard its secrets. At the moment, Japan and Germany are the only foreign countries that have a license to make Patriots, and only Japan has actually started production. Germany and Japan are pretty much the prototypical American allies - former World War II enemies transformed into model market democracies with which the U.S. has had decades of defense cooperation. They also have extremely advanced manufacturing industries and technical knowhow, which made it easier to find and license the dozens of sub-contractors needed to make the various parts that Patriots need.

Why not for Ukraine?

The Trump administration clearly sees Ukraine as a more complex case. In explaining his reversal, Trump said that “it's a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology” and: “These weapons are incredible. We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them.” In his most bizarre comment, he also said that countries who receive advanced technology can one day “turn on you”.

In some respects, it’s true that Ukraine is in many ways not an obvious place to begin Patriot production. For a start, it’s routinely bombed by Russia, and any Patriot production facility would be a prime target. Finding and licensing suppliers could take even longer than it has in Germany, which has a more advanced economy. And if the point is to get more interceptors on the battlefield right now, it seems to make more sense to just make them elsewhere and then sell them to Ukraine. Poland has already offered to host the factories, and that’s one active option under consideration in Washington.

But at this point, this isn’t just about these details. It’s about the fact that licensing Patriot production to Ukraine would send a strong political signal of commitment to Kyiv and further the “porcupine strategy” of making Ukraine a hard target for future attacks. Until Ukraine can deal with its own defense based on its own capacities, it will remain reliant on the kindness of outsiders. Patriot production gives it a concrete leg-up as well as a vote of confidence from Washington.

It’s possible that the deal isn’t dead yet. Because this is a deal, not just a binary yes-or-no thing - there are all kinds of details about production, technology transfer, and money to be negotiated between Washington and Kyiv. Trump has a tendency to say extreme things in the hope of moving negotiations along, and this may be an example of that. But it’s also another example of how Trump always destroys his own leverage. He’s turned something that was supposed to be about making Ukraine - and hence Europe and America - safer into something that instead is about his own inconsistency and untrustworthiness. It’s a hell of a way to build an Arsenal of Democracy.

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