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I’m not convinced of the utility of Patriot/David’s Sling in modern warfare. In the early phase of the 2026 Israel/USA-Iran war, Iran was shooting about a dozen missiles per night at Israel, and there’s good indication that a substantial amount got through. Of the (admittedly limited) number of videos that leaked out of Israel, Iranian rockets were often not even met by interceptor fire at all; some videos show how infrastructure get hit during daytime while no sirens are on; and in the cases that there was successful interception the kill rate appears to be less than 1/3.
Without speculating too much, it appears that these systems are not suitable for neutralizing hypersonic missiles. Further, they’re useless against cluster munitions, and using them on attack drones is a waste. Shahed-136 is getting a range extension and a 3x speed boost by the way.
Conclusion: Israeli weaponry is shit. It’s good for fighting asymmetric warfare when you’re the overwhelmingly stronger party. It’s great taking makeshift rockets made by an underground guerilla out of the sky. Against a real country, it’s a flawed doctrine and an impossible technology.
If the USA can’t defend their bases against Iran, then what exactly is the use of these missile interceptors against an enemy like Russia?
So maybe use those billions of Euros at home developing a real strategy.
I see a massive modern war in Ukraine, where Ukraine is fighting for survival. The number one system they want are missile interceptors like Patriot. They spend a lot of money and political capital on getting them. More then on any other system.
I see your point, but is that not partly because weapon sales to Ukraine is very limited? They’re not getting fighter jets, they’re not getting good offensive weapons (or if they do, they come with significant strings attached, like they have to promise not to hit certain regions or targets within Russia). But there are no such limits for interceptors. And interceptors are very expensive, so it’s small wonder that they’d quickly eat through your budget.
I mean, Ukraine is quite conservative with their use of Patriots, so they might only use them for missiles and only use a single interceptors (rather than throwing 2-3 Patriots at a drone like Israel does). But even so, they could have gotten a Gripen F for the price of 25 PAC-3 interceptors, if we’re just considering the price here. The problem is to get approval for the purchase (not gonna happen) and even if you did, get the planes delivered within a reasonable time frame (not gonna happen, would take years).
So there are the limits on what the West actually allows for export to Ukraine, and also the actual supply. A lot of the export has been theoretical, and slow to deliver, because the West wants to keep a lot of weapons in case they need it. And they know that they’re slow to produce more.