Sebastian Kahnert/picture alliance via Getty Images
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he plans to send Patriot batteries to Ukraine, though this time with Europe paying for the air defenses.
“We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “They are going to pay us 100% for that, and that’s the way we want it.”
Trump did not say on Sunday how many Patriot batteries he planned to send to Ukraine.
But one NATO ally is likely already willing to foot the bill. For the past few weeks, German leaders were reported to be scouting ways to procure more air defenses for Ukraine, which has been pounded relentlessly by growing waves of Russian drones and missile strikes.
Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed government source, that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called Trump about the matter as early as July 4.
In the days since, Merz has publicly confirmed such discussions.
“We are ready to acquire additional Patriot systems from the United States and make them available to Ukraine,” he said Thursday at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.
More recently, Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told The Financial Times that he would discuss with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the possibility of Berlin buying two Patriot systems for Kyiv.
“We only have six left in Germany,” Pistorius told the outlet in an interview published on Sunday. “That’s really too few, especially considering the NATO capability goals we have to meet. We definitely can’t give any more.”
Germany is believed to have 12 Patriot systems, three of which it has given to Ukraine. It’s stationed at least two more in Poland.
The MIM-104 Patriot system, in service since the 1980s, is considered one of the world’s most advanced surface-to-air missile defense systems.
Analysts think Ukraine likely has six to eight batteries — far less than what it needs to shield its cities from Russia’s nighttime strikes.
Meanwhile, the US has procured over 1,100 Patriot launchers so far. Eight of these launchers can be deployed at a time on a single battery.
Roughly 200 such launchers have been exported to other countries, while the US military actively runs 16 battalions of four batteries each.
That could mean the Pentagon has about 400 launchers, or about 50 batteries, left in its stockpile or in maintenance.
“The Americans need some of them themselves, but they also have a lot of them,” Merz said on Thursday of the Patriot systems.
Last year, his nation became the largest military spender in Western Europe for the first time since the Cold War, ramping up its defense budget by nearly 30% to $88.5 billion, per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The German Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Trump’s latest comments about the Patriot batteries come after he had paused American weapons and ammo aid to Ukraine at the start of the month, sparking concerns about the latter’s ability to defend itself with air interceptors.
But the president appeared to change his mind a week later, saying at a White House dinner event that he wanted to send more weapons to Kyiv.
“They have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump told reporters at the dinner.
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