US manufacturers producing Patriot air defense system missiles fear that Ukraine could improve them, produce them faster and cheaper if it were granted a license to manufacture these weapons, says The Atlantic magazine.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Saturday on the social network X that Donald Trump has finally agreed to licenses for Kyiv to develop these technologies. Although the White House has not yet confirmed this, such a decision would represent a significant shift in position.
For the first time, D. Trump spoke about Kyiv receiving a license to produce missiles for this critically important air defense system during the NATO summit in early July. Later, he began to hesitate, explaining that these munitions are needed by the United States for its own purposes.
Depleted stocks
Over six months of war in the Middle East, the United States has exhausted two-thirds of its Patriot missile stocks, reported The Atlantic, citing the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. This means not only fewer munitions stocks for Kyiv but also greater vulnerability to Russian ballistic attacks.
In a post published on the social network X on Saturday, V. Zelensky said that if his country were granted the right to produce Patriot missiles, Ukraine could begin large-scale production.
“We have now reached an agreement with President Trump that he will grant licenses, but imagine if we had received them four years ago,” he wrote. “Today we would already be producing Patriots for everyone… I am completely convinced of that.”
What US weapons developers fear
However, although the Ukrainian president also implied that the delay in granting missiles is merely a bureaucratic obstacle, The Atlantic, citing a source on Capitol Hill, writes that the companies Raytheon and Lockheed Martin fear that “the Ukrainians will find a way to improve the Patriot and then start mass-producing them faster and much cheaper than the currently operating production lines in the US can.”
An anonymous source also told the publication that both US defense industry giants “officially base their concerns on the risk of intellectual property theft and technology transfer.”
However, The Atlantic also notes that transferring the license could be beneficial to the United States itself, as it would allow leveraging Ukraine’s industrial capacities, which have been significantly expanded over more than four years of war.
