President Donald Trump said this morning from the NATO Summit that the U.S. will give Ukraine the licenses to build America’s prestige Patriot Missile systems in Kyiv.
"We're going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That's pretty cool. This way, you can't complain that we're not giving 'em enough," Trump said at a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
No, it's not "cool." It's foolish and a weak way of looking magnanimous when you know a) the Ukrainians will not be able to build them in time to make any difference and b) the war with Russia will never be won on the battlefield. It's a waste.
And it's also not worth the risk. According to George Beebe, director of the Quincy Institute's Grand Strategy program, this "will do little to fix Ukraine’s urgent air defense problems" because "It will take many months for Ukraine to get a production facility built. But Russia will attack that facility as soon as the first cornerstone is laid, and to have any hope of completing that construction, Ukraine will have to divert many existing Patriot batteries from their current locations to that new facility."
One wonders if Trump has been briefed on this. Zelensky started floating this idea this spring as an alternative to waiting for the U.S. to send them. Jen Kavanagh, in a piece for Responsible Statecraft in June, teed up the response regarding risk thusly:
The move would not measurably lessen Ukraine’s air defense deficit, but it would create substantial risks to U.S. national security by making it easier for competitors to get access to sensitive information about U.S. military systems. The Trump administration should therefore decline this request.
Instead, Trump appears to be leaning in hard, which is vexing since he manages to say some variation of "it's not my war" every chance he gets. Nevertheless the president appears to be more interested in flexing. Replying to Zelensky's ask for Patriot interceptors, which are in short supply, Trump boasted he could apply pressure on the company (Lockheed Martin) to produce them. "We have great power over the companies, those companies that make the Patriot," he said to Zelensky on Wednesday.
It's not clear why Lockheed would need its arm twisted in such a fashion, though honestly they are probably busy trying to restock the Pentagon's own supply. According to CSIS, the U.S. expended nearly half of its Patriot interceptors, and it will take until 2029 to fully replenish the stockpiles.
Currently, as Kavanagh points out, the only countries that have licenses to build the Patriot system are Japan and Germany and they "had to navigate complex legal requirements to qualify for this access. This included building and maintaining factories that meet precise standards, including for domestically sourced inputs; guaranteeing the information security of all technical information; and committing to end-use agreements that restrict the use and export of finished missiles."
Again it is not clear whether Trump is aware of any of this. No doubt the Pentagon is, and we wouldn't be surprised if this gift to Ukraine were slow walked into oblivion where it should be.
- US depleted its missiles in Ukraine, Israel. Now it wants more fast. ›
- Ukraine wants to make its own Patriot missiles. That's a bad idea. ›