Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte said the government was working on more Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine, in addition to the two units already protecting the Ukrainian skies. The statement was made during the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Moldova today, on June 1st.
Taking into account the vast territory of Ukraine which has to be covered from far-reaching russian ballistic missile attacks, the Dutch initiative is more than reasonable. As a reminder, one of the Ukrainian Patriot systems was supplied by the United States, and the other one by Germany – with two extra launchers to the battery provided by the Netherlands. Now the Dutch government will look into the possibility of giving one more entire fire unit, plus it will try to convince other countries operating Patriots to give theirs as well.
Read more: How Patriot Works When Intercepting Ballistic Targets
However, looking for more Patriot donors may turn out to be too difficult of a task. The problem is, there are not as many operators of the system in Europe. Besides Germany and the Netherlands, only Sweden, Spain, Poland, Romania and Greece have it in service.
We can cross out Greece from this list right away since it doesn't supply weapons to Ukraine directly. All the more so because this country has six Patriot PAC-2 batteries that are not capable of defeating ballistic missiles. The same generation of the air defense system is used in Spain too.
The European operators of the Patriot PAC-3 are Poland, Romania and Sweden. But they only started receiving the systems just recently and spent a very significant amount of money for that. For example, the first components of the first Patriot PAC-3 battery out of total seven systems worth $3.9 billion were received by the Romanian Armed Forces in 2022, with the delivery deadlines scheduled for 2026.
Poland spent $4.75 billion for four Patriot PAC-3s; the integration of these systems into the national air defense system began only in October 2022. Out of four batteries ordered by Sweden, the first one was received in November 2021, full combat readiness is expected by the end of 2026, too.
Considering that Romania experienced some wandering russian missiles crossing its airspace and Poland saw some of them falling on its territory 450 km deep into NATO airspace, it is unlikely that both these countries would be willing to donate their Patriots in the current situation. As for Sweden, objectively speaking, it won't cooperate either, at least as long as it isn't accepted into NATO.
Looking for more Patriot PAC-3 systems in the Netherlands is limited by the fact this country itself has only three units, not to mention one of them is now incomplete. The main operator of Patriots in Europe is still Germany with its 11 systems, approximately. Whether Berlin would agree to give another one is an open question.
At the same time, appeals to the countries outside europe and the us it looks like a dead end: israel japan jordan accurate qatar saudi arabia 51 south korea united arab emirates – all of them are not ready to provide such important weapons yet, for some of them having patriots is an essential condition for their own security.
That is why the United States remains the only real potential donor as this country operates the largest number of Patriot systems in the world. Although there is also an alternative where several countries join their efforts and assemble one complete patriot unit together.
Against this background, it seems more reasonable to just provide Ukraine with long-range attack missiles to enable the Ukrainian Armed Forces to hunt down russian ballistic missile launchers hiding in the territory of russia.
Read more: U.S. Announced Provision of Another Military Aid Package to Ukraine - Air Defense Systems, Ammunition Among Priorities
