Patriot air defense systems, missiles and ammunition are among the American-made weapons NATO allies will buy under an arms deal brokered with President Trump to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian attacks, officials say.
Nearly all of the weapons are immediately available to ship to Ukraine, officials said, meaning they are either from existing military stockpiles or have just been built.
Mr. Trump portrayed the new agreement as lucrative for the United States, despite giving few details on how it would be enacted. “It’s a very big deal we’ve made,” Mr. Trump said on Monday from the Oval Office alongside Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general.
“You have very wealthy countries buying the best equipment in the world, and we have the best equipment in the world,” Mr. Trump said. “We make equipment like no other.”
Mr. Rutte said that at least eight NATO countries were ready to pay for the arms and praised Mr. Trump for helping Ukraine obtain “what it needs to have to maintain, to be able to defend itself, against Russia.”
“But you do want Europeans to pay for it, which is totally logical,” Mr. Rutte said.
More Ukrainians were killed in June than in any other single month so far in the three-year war, the United Nations reported. Russian forces continue to advance in eastern Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Monday after the announcement that he was working on “major” defense agreements with the Trump administration but “it is not yet time to reveal the details publicly.”
What weapons are part of the deal?
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Rutte said Ukraine would receive additional U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems as part of the new deal.
Germany has offered to buy two systems and Norway a third. The United States has far more Patriot batteries than any other military — more than 60 of the estimated 180 worldwide, according to weapons trackers at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. But it is not clear which countries are selling theirs.
Mr. Trump did not commit to selling the United States’ supply of Patriots to Ukraine, and it is possible some arms will come from governments outside NATO’s 32-country alliance. Those countries would then be given priority to buy American-made replacements. That has already been happening throughout the war.
One unnamed country was poised to sell 17 of their Patriots, Mr. Trump said, because “they’re not going to need them.” That may be a reference to 17 Patriot launchers that the system’s American manufacturer, Raytheon, agreed in 2020 to sell to Switzerland, along with other parts. Launchers are just one component of a Patriot battery, which also includes radar, a command and control center and interceptor missiles.
Neither Mr. Rutte nor Mr. Trump detailed what other kinds of missiles and ammunition might be sold to allies for Ukraine. It could include more of what Ukraine already got in the first three years of the war, such as 155-millimeter artillery shells that are crucial to holding back Russia on the front lines, officials said.
Some could be weapons that Ukraine has requested but never received from the United States, including deep strike Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, or JASSMs (pronounced “jazz ’ems”). They can reach into Russia and can be fired from F-16 fighter jets that European allies have sent Ukraine over the past year.
How will this help Ukraine?
Ukraine’s officials have called air defenses — and Patriots in particular — the single most important weapon system they need right now.
Ukraine has about eight Patriot systems, although as recently as May, two were being refurbished and not functioning, U.S. officials have said. Most are positioned around the capital, Kyiv, which has left other cities vulnerable to Russian attacks.
Ukraine has other air defense systems, but only the Patriot has intercepted Russian ballistic missiles that can hit targets from many hundreds of miles away in minutes.
“Should the Patriot systems be shipped to Ukraine immediately, as Trump has indicated, they will have a more decisive effect on the battlefield,” said Torrey Taussig, a NATO expert and former Pentagon official now at the Atlantic Council.
How much money will this earn for the United States?
Generally, a single Patriot battery costs about $1 billion to build, depending on the model, and interceptor missiles cost about $3.7 million each. JASSMs sell for about $1.5 million each. And 155-millimeter artillery shells can cost thousands of dollars per round.
“This is billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment that’s going to be purchased from the United States, going to NATO,” Mr. Trump said. “And that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Does the United States have enough weapons to sell?
American military officials have long worried that the war in Ukraine would drain its stockpiles, putting at risk U.S. troops and interests overseas.
On Monday, Mr. Rutte said that whatever the Pentagon sells from its own stockpiles would not reduce what is “necessary to defend this country.”
He added that the overall deal “will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment.”
Lara Jakes, based in Rome, reports on diplomatic and military efforts by the West to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years.
The post What We Know About the U.S. Deal for a Weapons Pipeline to Ukraine appeared first on New York Times.
