Ukraine has all but run out of Patriot interceptors, according to a CNN report published around August 17, 2026. CNN was the first outlet given access to a Patriot launcher on Ukrainian territory, and agreed not to reveal the model or its location.
The launcher’s 16 tubes showed signs of regular use, but its chief engineer in Ukraine, who gave only his first name, Dmytro, for security reasons, said he hadn’t seen a Patriot launcher fire for six weeks. Ukraine hasn’t said how many interceptors, if any, it has left. President Volodymyr Zelensky says the country needs 5% of the US stockpile to survive the winter but has about 1%. Those figures aren’t independently verified.
The shortage stems partly from heavy use of Patriots in the Gulf during the Iran war. The Foreign Policy Research Institute estimated coalition forces used about 225 interceptors a day in the first four days of the war, while Lockheed Martin made 620 in all of 2025, about 1.7 a day. Zelensky told CNN he has offered Raytheon and Lockheed Martin ownership of any interceptor plant they allow in Ukraine. President Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara in July that Ukraine would be licensed to build Patriot interceptors, though CNN reported he later expressed doubts, and a White House official said no decisions or guarantees have been made.
Sources: CNN via KEYT.
