Key actors — tap for context
Volodymyr Zelenskyj
President of Ukraine since 2019
Why here: Immediately after the Russian strike on 1–2 June, he called for new Patriot interceptors.
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Lockheed Martin
The largest American arms manufacturer, producer of the newest Patriot interceptors.
Why here: Wants to more than triple interceptor production.
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CSIS
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, a leading defense think tank.
Why here: Estimates the Patriot shortage will last two to three years.
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NATO
The North Atlantic Alliance, collective defense of 32 states.
Why here: The US wants to cut the forces it has allocated to its force model in Europe.
More info →SAMP/T
A French-Italian air and missile defense system.
Why here: A European alternative to the Patriot, but on its own it does not replace the full range of American capabilities.
What Marianne says
On the night of 1–2 June, Russia fired 73 missiles and nearly 700 drones at Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyj immediately called for new Patriot interceptors, but stockpiles had meanwhile been depleted elsewhere. Since the start of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, the Gulf states reportedly fired more than 1,100 interceptors, while only around 620 units of the newest Patriot version were produced in all of 2025. "In just a few weeks, the war consumed nearly two years of production," the weekly sums up. Marianne ↗So missiles are being used up far faster than they can be manufactured. America's Lockheed Martin wants to more than triple production, but an industrial production line cannot be changed within a few months. Mark Cancian of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates the shortage will "probably" last "two to three years." CSIS ↗ Ukraine already has to choose today what to protect — a power plant, an air base, a command center, or a major city. And Moscow, which knows these dilemmas well, can multiply its attacks in order to exhaust Ukraine's shield.
Europe does have such systems, for example the French-Italian SAMP/T, but none of them alone replaces the full range of American capabilities.
What's different here from Slovak coverage
Slovak and Czech media usually treat the Patriots as a matter of logistics: who will supply how many to Kyiv. Marianne turns this into a question of structural dependency — Europe cannot maintain an air-defense shield on its own in a long war, not even France, whose own stockpiles are limited.This view is gaining weight right now. At the same time, Washington has sent allies a plan to reduce its contribution to NATO's so-called force model in Europe — fighter jets from 150 to 100, all eight tanker aircraft, and reconnaissance capacity from 26 to 15. We cover this in a separate analysis. In other words: just as the missile shortage is exposing Europe's dependency, America is scaling back its commitment.
Marianne's figures are also confirmed by American sources. CSIS estimated that during the war with Iran the US used up roughly half of its pre-war Patriot stockpiles, and replenishment will take until around 2029. Fox News ↗ For the eastern flank — the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia — this means a double pressure: fewer American missiles and fewer American forces.
Limits of this view
Marianne is a French center-left weekly with a traditional emphasis on "European strategic autonomy," a theme that Paris has also long championed. It naturally frames the Patriot shortage as an argument for the European and French arms industry. In doing so, it underplays that European production is ramping up — the modernized SAMP/T NG as well as the German-led European Sky Shield initiative — and that part of the crisis was caused precisely by the diversion of interceptors to the war with Iran, i.e., a temporary shock rather than a permanent state. Moreover, the full Marianne article is behind a paywall, so we are working from the introduction and framing rather than the complete analysis.What hotinfo is watching
- Whether the US will definitively confirm the cuts to forces allocated to NATO at the Ankara summit (a decision is expected around 28 June).
- Deliveries of the modernized SAMP/T NG and progress on the German-led European Sky Shield initiative.
- Whether Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon stick to the plan to triple interceptor production.
