The soaring demand for Patriot missiles, from the Middle East to Ukraine
The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said in July that the U.S. had more than 2,300 Patriots before President Trump launched the Iran war on Feb. 28. Today, the number is around 800.
There's something here everyone has missed. This is an entirely new situation in War logistics since WWII. Never before, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Kuwait to Iraq has the FSoA been short of the Death from Above to rain down on uncooperative Brown People. Why now?
The answer is the missiles have rendered the old form of aerial warfare and dumb bombs obsolete. The FSoA has lotsa dumb bombs to drop from bombers, but they are very inaccurate and you get a lot of collateral damage and civilian casualties. More importantly the VERY expensive B2 Stealth Bombers used to drop them are themselves very vulnerable to missiles when flying at bombing altitudes. The reason so few planes have been lost is they are not flying over Iran!
Dumb bombs were cheap. Missiles are very expensive. They also are much harder to build. You can't just hire housewives to stick semtex into metal casings. Every missile requires its own rocket engine and guidance system like a jet plane, but it is Single Use. Your basically blowing up a rocket every time you fire one off.
It's also why the FSoA doesn't want to license the Patriots. They are the best ssystem for knocking flying objects out of the air, including FSoA jets.
Best case scenario it takes 3 years to rebuild the inventory, but at the rate they use them now, they'll never do it. The cost would be astronomical.
RE