Israeli anti-air defence system interceptor flies through the sky, after missiles were launched towards Israel from Iran, following strikes by Israel and the U.S. on Iran, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, March 1, 2026
| Photo Credit:
Amir Cohen
Several European Union states warned at a closed-door meeting in Brussels this week that there is a shortage of interceptors across the world, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some of the officials noted that interceptor missiles could become more scarce if the war in the Middle East drags on. The continent has already tapped stockpiles to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s aggression, the people said.
In Asia, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes Patriot missiles under license from Lockheed Martin Corp. but it has limited capacity to contribute to global stocks.
MHI is ramping up annual production from around 30 units a year, but it has also struggled with a bottleneck of supplies of components known as seekers that have to be shipped from the US. In 2025, the US produced about 600 of the missiles.
Tokyo exported a batch of Patriot missiles to the US last year, but Japanese defense officials say the country needs its own deeper inventories of both Patriots and ship-launched SM-3 missiles used in air defense.
Kyiv still faces constant bombardment from Russian missiles, and needs a steady flow of interceptors. Sending European supplies to allies in the Gulf also risks diverting resources away from Ukraine, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. It is a scenario officials in Moscow believe will come to pass.
The fears of an interceptor shortage come as years of warnings from Kyiv have become reality this week: cheap drones can cause colossal damage far beyond Ukraine.
Alongside hundreds of ballistic missiles, waves of drone attacks by Iran have been putting pressure on the defenses of the US and its partners in the region. More than 1,000 Shahed-136 one-way strike drones — small, rudimentary cruise missiles — have pounded targets across the Middle East, hitting US bases, oil infrastructure and civilian buildings.
Meanwhile, Russia has used thousands of drones based on the same Iranian design to pummel Ukrainian cities and infrastructure over the course of the war there.
US-made Patriot missiles have been largely successful in stopping Shaheds and ballistic missiles, with the United Arab Emirates reporting interception rates of over 90 per cent. But using multimillion-dollar missiles to destroy $20,000 drones illustrates a problem that haunts Western military planners: The cheap weapons can chew up resources meant for much more complex threats.
“They have missiles for the Patriots, but hundreds or thousands of Shaheds cannot be intercepted with Patriot missiles – it is too costly,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview this week.
On Thursday he offered to share his country’s expertise in countering drones with allies in the region in exchange for much-needed Patriot missiles.
In the Iran conflict, Patriot PAC-3, SM-3 Block IIA, SM-6, and THAAD interceptors are among the most valuable systems on the battlefield. Lockheed Martin is the primary manufacturer of the PAC-3 and THAAD missiles, while RTX Corp. produces the SM series as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles, which were used heavily in the war’s opening days.
The missiles range in cost from about $4 million for a PAC-3 to nearly three times that for an SM-3 Block IIA, which is designed to destroy ballistic missiles in space.
On Friday, top defense contractors including Lockheed and RTX are are set to meet at the White House as the Pentagon pushes to speed weapons production for an escalating war on Iran. Both companies signed agreements with the Defense Department this year to boost production.
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Published on March 6, 2026