by DAVID AXE
Ukrainian leaders surely watches with extreme worry as, in months of on-again, off-again fighting with Iran, U.S. and allied forces wantonly fired off thousands of their best Patriot air defense missiles. The Patriot is one of a small number of missile systems that can shoot down enemy ballistic missiles such as Russia’s Iskander. The ground-launched Iskander travels 700 km with a 500-kg warhead at seven times the speed of sound.
Russia has been lobbing scores of the 3.8-ton Iskanders at Ukrainian cities, ports and power plants every month. Production of the $3-million missiles has surged to more than 700 per year. And while Ukraine has as many as 10 donated Patriot batteries, it has so few missiles that air defenders can do little more than watch as Iskanders barrel in. “This is a really heartbreaking sight,” a Ukrainian Patriot crewman named Dmytro told CNN.
The U.S. stockpile of the missiles, which can cost as much as $3.9 million per round, was just 2,330 before the war on Iran began in February. By the time Washington and Tehran announced a brief ceasefire in April, the Americans had fired as many as 1,430 of their Patriots. More than half, according to a tally by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
