[ncallaway]

The Ukrainian claim is in that engagement they downed 6 Kinzhals, 9 Kalibrs and 3 Iskanders.

We don’t need to take the Ukrainian claims as totally accurate, but it’s worth at least including that the battery of patriots were fired at more than just the 2-6 Kinzhal missiles that you tallied (at least when we want to look at annual production rates).

The Russian’s haven’t been able to sustain a launch rate of once a month with smaller attacks. This attack was an unusually high density. Expending three weeks production capacity to fend off an attack that can be launched at most every 2-3 months seems… manageable.

In terms of this conflict, also worth considering that Patriot isn’t the only system in Ukraine, so if production of Patriot missiles becomes a constraint, they can shift more AD burden to IRIS-T and other European systems.

When considering the broader implications to the US, I think it’s not exactly right to describe Patriot as our “existing missile defense”. We have a number of other missile defense systems such as NASAMs and THAAD that occupy complimentary roles to the Patriot systems. If anything based on the performance of Patriot in Ukraine I have more confidence than I previously did in our missile defense systems. Performance in real world conditions has seemed pretty good to me.