Patriot games: How America is outgunning Europe on air defense

When it comes to marketing an air defense system, the best advert is seeing it in action.
Russia’s latest bombardment of Ukraine on Monday with at least 127 missiles and 109 drones focused attention back on the ground-based air defense platforms donated to Kyiv by its Western allies — and especially the U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot.
The fuss around the Patriots, a workhorse of Western air defense since the 1980s, is leaving the equally able Franco-Italian SAMP/T system in the dust even though, on specs at least, it provides a formidable, Europe-made alternative.
“The Patriot is by far the most used system in Ukraine, and it has had a good, if not stellar, track record,” said Fabian Hoffmann, a researcher on missile technology at the University of Oslo. “People trust what they see, and the reputation is there.”
What buyers want is battlefield experience and the Patriot has that in spades — from the Gulf war in 1991 through decades of use in Israel, during the Iraq War, by Saudi Arabia against Houthis from Yemen, and now in Ukraine.
The SAMP/T has a much sparser combat record — first being fired in anger in Ukraine; the system’s Aster 30 missiles were also used by the French navy on the Red Sea earlier this year to down ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels.
That affects sales.
Nineteen European countries use the Patriot (though Switzerland’s platforms are still on order) and billions in new deals have been signed in recent years. So far not a single SAMP/T system has been sold since Singapore signed up in 2013 — which is a problem for Rome and Paris.
Meanwhile, the Patriots have been getting plenty of free publicity out of Kyiv.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has name-checked the Patriots, calling the Raytheon and Lockheed Martin-built system the “most powerful” and adding that “nothing else works against ballistic threats.”
That’s a problem for the SAMP/T Mamba, which is also designed to destroy ballistic missiles and is currently going through a major upgrade. The SAMP/T NG, standing for next generation, is set to be delivered in 2026 but is open for orders now.
The United States has pledged two Patriot systems to Ukraine, while Germany has committed three. The Dutch government has cobbled together components to shift a platform too, while the Romanians have pledged to dispatch one if the U.S. promises to back-fill it.
Meanwhile, Italy and France jointly sent one SAMP/T system to Ukraine last year, and Italy has pledged a second.
Executives freely admit that war has buoyed demand for Patriots.
Speaking at the Farnborough International Air Show in July, Thomas Laliberty, Raytheon’s president of land and air defense systems, said that the Ukraine conflict had “really prompted a sustained interest in Patriots.”
However, soaring demand is creating problems for Patriot manufacturers.
“It takes us 12 months to build a Patriot radar, but it takes us 24 months to get all the parts,” Laliberty said, citing the difficulty of rapidly ramping up production.
Raytheon says that 13 Patriots are currently on order, with work mostly taking place at a plant in Massachusetts. Of those, five are bound for Switzerland as part of a $2.2 billion deal and four to Germany under two separate contracts totaling $2.4 billion.
Each platform includes three main truck-mounted sections; a radar to monitor incoming aircraft and projectile threats; a control unit and a launcher which can fire 16 interceptors.
The system fires the latest PAC-3 MSE missiles made by Lockheed Martin — each one costing about $3.7 million. They use hyper-accurate Ka-band millimeter seekers which means they can destroy targets through brute kinetic force on impact, known in military lingo as hit-to-kill.
Production is running at 550 PAC-3 missiles a year, but a new plant in Arkansas will get that to 650 by 2027. Earlier generation PAC-2 missiles are still in production; they have a longer range but are less accurate as they lack the PAC-3’s onboard guidance system.
For its part, the SAMP/T NG will also upgrade to a Ka-band seeker for its Aster missiles just like the PAC-3. Each Aster 30 missile costs about $2 million. The cost of a SAMP/T system has been pitched around $500 million, while for a Patriot the estimate is a bit higher.
SAMP/T will offer a detection range of more than 350 kilometers and its Aster 30 missiles can intercept targets with their fragmentation warhead at upward of 150 kilometers, according to its producer Eurosam, a tie-up between MBDA and Thales.
That range beats the Patriot; the latest PAC-3 MSE missile has a range of about 120 kilometers.
Experts also point to SAMP/T’s more efficient operation in terms of soldiers needed, the ability to track more threats simultaneously and a design which allows the system to monitor 360 degrees from one unit as reasons why a SAMP/T offers more functionality compared to a Patriot.
However, the Patriot is more flexible, intercepting targets including aircraft, drones, and ballistic and cruise missiles, while the SAMP/T is mainly designed to bring down aircraft and ballistic missiles.
The problem for Eurosam is that Patriots already have a global network of producers and users, said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
Japan and Germany each have licensing deals for the PAC-2 interceptor missiles, while some 48 launchers will also be produced under a joint deal with Huta Stalowa Wola in Poland under a deal announced this month.
The mass production of thousands of PAC-3 missiles as well as older PAC-2 missiles in the United States, Europe and Asia means “that the missile has multiple users and thus there is a global market and ecosystem for components and interceptors,” said Kaushal.
Those aren’t the only interceptors on the market.
Ukraine is using NASAMS, a short- to medium-range ground-based air defense system developed by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Raytheon, as well as the medium-range IRIS-T made by Germany’s Diehl Defence.
There’s work underway to upgrade both the NASAMS and IRIS-T to better counter ballistic missiles.
The fuss around the Patriots as the best bet against Russian missiles is a big problem for the SAMP/T.
The German air force said over the weekend that it had started training a new batch of Ukrainian troops to use Patriots.
Meanwhile, Berlin has made the system a critical part of its Sky Shield air defense initiative which has at least 21 European allies signed up to build and run a multi-tier, cross-continental network to repel aerial threats.
To the consternation of Paris and Rome, Sky Shield also incorporates Israel’s long-range Arrow-3 and Germany’s IRIS-T.
The French and Italian governments have sought to persuade EU countries to rally around the SAMP/T, with their national defense ministers writing to colleagues earlier this year that their system is “capable of effectively engaging the full spectrum of threats.”
While Rome and Paris pledged this year to ramp up their donations of Aster missiles to Ukraine and offer a second SAMP/T, so far, there’s been limited interest from potential buyers.
The hope in France is that SAMP/T sales could be helped by the sheer weight of demand for Patriots.
“The lead time for receiving a Patriot is significant so maybe this will be a boost for MBDA [and Eurosam],” said Hoffmann. “Two to three years for a SAMP/T isn’t so bad if you have to wait five years plus for a Patriot.”