Iran has launched about 500 ballistic missiles and several thousand drones at targets across the Middle East, according to publicly available data cited in the press. Considering that intercepting a single ballistic missile requires two PAC-3 missiles for the Patriot system—each costing more than $10 million—the total price tag is staggering: roughly $10 billion spent just to repel ballistic missile attacks.
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The challenge is that the primary—and only—manufacturer of PAC-3 missiles, Lockheed Martin, produced just 620 of them in 2025. Replenishing existing stocks alone would take more than a year.
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Britain has already proposed a possible solution: turning to Ukraine for help.
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To understand the scale of the challenge Ukraine faces, one number is enough: 19,000. That is how many Shahed and other drones Russia launched against Ukraine in the winter of 2025–2026 alone. The number continues to grow: more than 15,000 drones were launched during the summer of 2025. Ukrainian cities remain under constant attack, while the country’s territory is vast.
Ukraine operates a multi-layered defense system that includes anti-aircraft missiles, anti-aircraft guns, mobile fire groups, and interceptor drones. As a result, expensive PAC-3 missiles do not need to be used to intercept Russian-Iranian Shahed drones.
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Ukraine should not assist. They remain in existential conflict and pulling resources away from that is traitorous.
It all depends what Ukraine gets in return I would say.
Ukraine is not offering to give what they have, but rather sell, so they can make more for themselves, and to do joint production.
The US needs to be able to shoot down 2000 “things” per days, and likely far more. Ukraine proves that - they shot down almost that many UAVs just yesterday. Patriot is a part of that - Russia has launched a lot more than just low speed drones (though that is the majority), in enough that 1000 patriots per year is not enough even if they were a perfect 1 launch to on intercept (no misses, no training/test launches, and no launch two at one incoming just in case - I don’t know how patriot is used but all of those seem reasonable).
We need to increase the patriot production capacity asap. We also should take Ukraine up on their offer. One Tomahawk (which can take out production of future drones/missiles) for 10 of their drones seems like a good trade for both.
2000 things from where? Canada? Mexico?
Generally speaking the US is vulnerable to ballistic missiles, or interior attacks. Shahed style drones are not really viable.