For instance, the U.S. currently produces 600 PAC-3 MSE interceptors per year, essential for countering ballistic missiles. These are distributed among all global operators of the Patriot system, including Japan, which assembles about 30 annually from American components (though still limited by Boeing making only 600 homing heads annually).

To repel a single Iranian missile strike on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, two Patriot batteries reportedly fired between 28 and 56 missiles — and that was only the American contingent, not including Qatari systems.

This illustrates the looming risk: Washington could decide to direct the entire MSE output to U.S. forces, or perhaps 99% to itself, and 1% to allies like Ukraine. The same risk applies to 155mm artillery ammunition, where monthly U.S. output currently stands at 40,000 rounds — well below the promised 75,000. Under the "America First" framework, these munitions too could be withheld from Ukraine.

The main problem is that modern weapons are no longer simply a matter of money. They are constrained by time and production capacity. This explains, in particular, why Ukraine’s offer to purchase U.S. arms for $30–50 billionwent unanswered.

WASHINGTON — The US Army is considering scrapping General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS) management of three new 155mm artillery round production lines in Mesquite, Texas, according to a “show cause” letter obtained by Breaking Defense.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the heavy use of artillery, the Army rushed to bolster 155mm production and produce 100,000 shells per month. As part of that broader push, it opened a new government-owned facility in Texas, tapping GD-OTS to operate it and stand up three Universal Artillery Projectile Lines (UAPL) to produce the metal parts for artillery projectiles, including the shell casings.

That work, though, has not gone smoothly, and the service is now “considering terminating” the GD deals for all three UPLA lines, according to a June 13 letter from Army Contracting Command (ACC) to the company.

“GD-OTS has failed to complete the projects on time or make meaningful progress towards meeting the required completion dates of design and installation of the three (3) UAPLs,” the Army wrote in the letter. A show cause letter is a formal document requiring an individual or company to detail why specific actions or inactions should not result in consequences — in this case, termination of the three production line deals.

As of mid-June, the service noted that GD-OTS had missed period of performance completion dates for both UAPL lines 1 and 2 — Nov. 22, 2024, and April 16 of this year, respectively — while noting that while the line 3 deadline doesn’t occur until March 3, 2026, that appears likely to slip too.

“Because GD-OTS has failed to meet significant milestones for UAPL 1, leading to six (6) missed First Article Test dates spanning April 2024 through June 2025, resultant schedule impacts have continued to extend [to] UAPL 2 and UAPL schedules,” the Army explained. “Specifically, for Line 3, since January 2025 alone GD-OTS’ estimate for equipment installation slipped three (3) months, thus extending total installation timeframe and subsequent line prove-out activities into 2027.”

Additionally, the service said that even after it was determined that Line 1 equipment did not meet “technical requirements of the contract,” the company continued shipping Line 3 equipment. As a result, there is a “significant risk” that similar Line 3 equipment will also not be up to snuff. Compounding the issue, on May 29 GD-OTS notified Army officials that it had halted work on UAPL 3 “on its own accord,” a decision taken without direction or concurrence from the service.

All taken together, the Army wrote, GD-OTS “is failing to make progress” on the third line

“Because GD-OTS has failed to perform the UAPL Task Orders… within the timeframe required by the contractual terms, the USG is considering terminating” the deals but a final decision has not been made, the Army added. The letter does not go into detail about what other companies could be tapped to replace GD-OTS.

The letter gave GD-OTS 10 days to respond in writing and affirm if it is capable of completing the design and installation for the first two lines and produce either 10,000 M795 or M1128 projectile metal parts per month, and 10,000 M795 parts per month for that third line.

While an ACC official declined to discuss specifics of that show cause letter, they told Breaking Defense today that GD-OTS’s deadline has now been extended to July 10.

“We won’t get into specifics in the discussion with GD-OTS, but we have communicated to them that they have received an approved extension until 10 July to provide information on how they plan to fulfill their obligations on this contract,” the service official wrote in a brief statement. “ACC supports Army readiness and modernization by using best practices and expert-level oversight to provide warfighters with premier contracting support.”

There is a cold logic in Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression. He believes that Russia has more of everything— more men, more tanks, more aircraft, more drones, more missiles, and a greater tolerance to squander it all for the leader’s great project of subjugating Ukraine.

In one area at least, his math is right. An examination of the output numbers for ballistic and other missiles, and drones, show sharply rising output at low cost, while Western interceptors are produced far more slowly and at much greater expense.

It’s an equation that risks ultimately swamping Ukraine’s air defenses and opening the country’s military and its civilians to unchecked attack. (It should also alert the wider West to the risks it now faces from massed, coordinated aerial assault.) Russia’s aerial campaign may not win the war — Ukrainians stubbornly refuse to surrender on Putin’s demands for capitulation — but it can do very extensive damageand greatly raise the cost.

So what are the numbers?

In June, Russia’s defense industry produced approximately 195 strategic missile units. Output included 60 to 70 Iskander-M ballistic missiles, 10 to 15 Kinzhalhypersonic missiles, and 60 to 63 Kh-101 cruise missiles.

This production volume was enabled by post-2022 infrastructure expansion at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant. Modifications included two additional workshops, 2,500 personnel, and computer numerical control (CNC) machining systems sourced from China, Taiwan, and Belarus for airframe and control system fabrication.

Rostec and Tactical Missiles Corporation coordinate labor assignment, component procurement, and material intake under centralized state contracting. Input flows are routed through protected domestic supply channels. No commercial subcontractors are involved. No multi-agency approvals are required.

Add to that skyrocketing rises in drone production, including a sevenfold increase in output of modernized and largely autonomous Iranian Shahed drones, which now include everything from Nvidia chips to thermal vision and hardened navigation — Ukraine’s military describes this as representing “a challenge to our entire doctrine of air defense.”

What of the West’s defensive missile production? Interceptor manufacturing in NATO-aligned states remains constrained by fixed output ceilings and delayed production line expansion. Lockheed Martin produced 500 PAC-3 MSE interceptors in 2024. Stated 2025 output is 600 units, with a projected ceiling of 650 by 2027. Japan contributes 30 units annually. Expansion plans are delayed by component shortfalls in seeker assemblies. GEM-T interceptor production in Germany will not be operational before the third quarter of next year.

​​​​​Ukraine operates between six and eight Patriot batteries. As of July, PAC-3 missile transfers from the United States have been suspended following (contested) US claims that it must address depletion of its own inventories. French-Italian SAMP/T and Crotale systems inside Ukraine are non-operational due to total interceptor exhaustion. Forward-positioned Ukrainian Patriot batteries held no remaining PAC-3 interceptors as of June 30, 2025.

Russian missile production in the second quarter of this year totaled 585 units. PAC-3 output from the United States, Japan, and European partners will remain capped at 650 units annually. Russian manufacturing operates on state-issued throughput mandates. NATO-aligned interceptor production remains tied to peacetime contracting models and delayed component delivery schedules.
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The outcome of all this is predictable. In a typical engagement, interception of six incoming Iskander missiles requires 12-18 PAC-3 interceptors. The resulting expenditure, between $48m-$72m, exceeds Russia’s monthly ballistic production cost by a factor of two. Ukrainian stocks are depleted faster than they can be replenished. Donor nations have not adjusted procurement models to reflect the adversary’s unit economics.

As of mid-2025, no Western supplier has implemented structural reforms to reduce interceptor unit cost. No integrated missile defense production program exists at scale. Contractual reconfiguration remains unaddressed.

Russian missile platforms now incorporate counter-intercept adaptations. Modified Iskander variants deploy radar decoys, irregular flight paths, and terminal-phase maneuvers designed to degrade Patriot effectiveness. Ukrainian data from April and May 2025 confirms declining intercept rates during saturation strikes. Interceptor overuse combined with degraded hit probability accelerates depletion.

Western procurement remains optimized for low-volume, precision defense. No scalable framework exists to match sustained missile attrition under cost pressure. Current industrial posture is insufficient to cover multi-theater needs.

Stockpile asymmetry now functions as a strategic weapon. Unit cost disparities can be converted into coercive leverage over time. This is simply not being addressed in the West, which can only be seen as highly vulnerable to attack by swarms of drones and missiles that it will not be able to fend off.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2025 4:00 AM CET
BY NICK CARTERGeneral Nick Carter is the former U.K. Chief of the Defence Staff. He is a strategic counselor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Defense ministers, senior military officers and industry leaders are gathering in London this week for the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), claimed to be the world’s largest military expo. But while the DSEI offers a glimpse into the future of warfare, showcasing the latest technologies, Europe’s real test isn’t innovation in theory — it’s whether it can mobilize fast enough in reality.

As the Atlantic Council recently put it, Europe’s problem until now has been its political and military unwillingness to rise to the challenge. But with Washington wavering and Moscow menacing, the continent is at a strategic juncture, faced with the choice of assuming responsibility for its own defense and security, or remaining dangerously dependent on forces beyond its control.


What’s in doubt is whether growing common cause among European leaders and significant increases in European defense spending can unfold quickly enough to save Ukraine without significant help from the U.S. It also remains to be seen if these factors can restore deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area to discourage a Russian threat materializing before 2030.

These days, deterrence must also account for the so-called “grey zone.” Russia is already eroding NATO’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defense through attacks that fall into this hybrid category, all designed to weaken resolve without triggering a conventional military response. And it is likely to escalate such calibrated provocations including, for example, undersea cable sabotage, cyberattacks on power grids or missile “accidents” near NATO territory. All this is a deliberate strategy to expand Moscow’s influence.

Meanwhile, on the battlefield in Ukraine, we’re seeing a mix of World War I and World War III — a real-time case study foreshadowing some aspects of future warfare. Over the last few years, we have witnessed how fast the character of conflict evolves, and how the boundaries between land, sea, air, space and cyberspace fade as we seek to integrate these domains for advantage.

Here, many rightly point to Ukraine’s ingenuity in adapting under fire, but Russia has innovated at equal speed and scale: deploying cheap drones, electromagnetic jamming, AI-enabled targeting and retooling its economy into an engine of war. This year alone, the country will produce 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles and 200 ballistic missiles — matching NATO’s annual output in a matter of months.

​​Too often, defense spending is treated as an industrial jobs program rather than a security imperative. But governments must be honest with their citizens: Higher defense spending will mean hard trade-offs.

Today, polls show that even though half of Britons expect a world war within a decade, only a third support raising defense budgets if it means higher taxes or cuts elsewhere. And while Europe needs to be aiming for at least 3.5 percent of GDP on defense, even this level of spending will fall short without procurement reform and a wartime mindset in industry.
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DSEI will display the technologies shaping tomorrow’s battlefields, but the real question is whether Europe has the will, speed and coordination to turn those technologies into credible deterrence.

Our economies are 10 times the size of Russia’s, our technological base is vastly stronger, and our alliances are unmatched. If we choose to act with urgency, then any threat from Russia can be dealt with.

The question is whether we will.

“Paper tiger”. That is how Donald Trump described Russia during his UN speech on Tuesday, but judging by their performance, that put-down could equally be applied to most of America’s own allies. That became clear enough earlier this month, when 21 Russian drones flew into Polish airspace, triggering a Nato air-intrusion alert, the closure of Polish airports, the scrambling of fighters to intercept them — and a hard look at combat readiness right across the alliance.

Dutch F-35 fighters bagged four of the drones, and the others went down by themselves: they were not bombardment drones, just plastic decoys without explosive warheads. Debris aside, in fact, the only damage was the destruction of a house near Lublin, caused not by the Russians, but by a sophisticated $1.9 million US air-to-air missile. It had been launched by a Polish F-16 fighter at a drone — and missed.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, was quick to use the Russian incursion to call for more defence spending, urging Nato members to spend 5% of their GDPs on defence. This week’s latest apparent drone incursion, this time over Denmark, has raised the pressure even further: especially now that Scott Bessent, the US Secretary of the Treasury, is warning that Trump has no plans to send more troops to help out his European allies.

But simply raising defence spending will not turn Europe’s states into genuinely effective military powers. For one thing, the GDP criterion is much too vague to mean much. Finland, for instance, spends only 2.4% of its GDP on defence and yet can mobilise some 250,000 determined soldiers. Other Nato members, which spend much more than the Finns, obtain far less for their money.

As for Germany, three and half years since the start of the Ukraine war, with ever more ambitious rearmament plans loudly promised, the total number of personnel in uniform has actually slightly decreased. And, aside from beginning a multi-billion euro purchase on an Israeli missile-defence system, nothing much has happened. Despite its high demand in Ukraine, even the battle tank, that German specialty, is being produced in very, very small numbers: so low that the annual output could be lost in a morning of combat. In May 2023, indeed, a meagre 18 Leopard tanks were ordered to replace older models lost in Ukraine. The expected delivery date? Between 2025 and 2026! Then, in July, Germany purchased a further 105 advanced Leopard 2A8s. That is the number needed to equip a single brigade, the German force stationed in Lithuania — and they are expected to arrive in 2030!

The sad truth, then, is that Germany has yet to start working in earnest to correct the extreme neglect inflicted on its armed forces during the long Merkel premiership, when she kept saying that “even if we had the money we would not know how to spend it”. All the while, German helicopters lacked rotors and tanks lacked engines. The exceedingly slow recovery of the German army is especially frustrating because Nato is not actually short of air or naval forces. What it lacks are ground forces, soldiers more simply, or rather soldiers actually willing to fight. Having added Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to the alliance, tiny countries with outsized defence needs, the alliance faces a severe troop deficit across the entire Baltic sector. The troops so far sent by Nato allies, such as visiting Alpini battalions from Italy, cannot improve the maths.

As for the other European armies, the less said the better. The Danes and Swedes announced with great fanfare that they were joining Finland in introducing conscription: only to accommodate so many demands for exemptions that in 2024 they enrolled some 10,000 troops between them, as compared to 77,000 Finns 18 year olds drawn from a far smaller population. The Belgians and Dutch, who used to provide three armoured divisions to Nato, might now field a tenth of that: a mere three battalions. The Italian, Spanish, Portuguese armies do not even train in earnest anymore. Their exercises are bored drills, their manoeuvres theatrical displays scripted to look good, instead of being deliberately disrupted by supervisors to test the mental and physical agility of officers and men as in real manoeuvres. As total numbers shrink, moreover, those armies did not reduce the number of officers anywhere near proportionately, meaning many Nato armies have plenty of generals but very few combat-ready troops for them to lead.

​​​​​​​ All of the above explains why Putin’s motley army — home-grown mercenaries from Russia’s poorest backwaters, convicted criminals and North Korean slave soldiers — can nevertheless frighten European governments into rearming at great expense. As for Donald Tusk and his Poles — they would do well to learn the lessons of another Russian incursion in September. Not in 2025, but in 1939, when the French army did not move, and the Royal Air Force did not bomb. The difference now, of course, is that Poland really could defend itself, if it emulated the Finns across the Baltic and conscripted 18-year-olds, while continuing to add trained soldiers to its reserve units. Fail, however, and Putin will only keep pushing.