Lockheed Martin announced a new PAC-3 interceptor on Monday that it said costs less than half the price of a regular Patriot missile.
The PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or ACE, is “built to defeat a wide range of air and missile threats for less than half the cost of a PAC-3 MSE per unit,” the defense giant said in a statement.
Described as a “low-cost interceptor,” the PAC-3 ACE is designed to work fully with the Patriot missile weapon system and is tailored to counter higher-end threats such as air-breathing, cruise, and ballistic missiles.
Lockheed Martin did not disclose the cost of the PAC-3 ACE, but the regular PAC-3 Missile is priced at about $4.2 million per missile.
Global demand for these missiles has soared as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have drained the US and its allies’ stock of air-defense munitions.
Ukraine, which has been receiving shipments of Patriot interceptors from the West, has repeatedly said this year that its batteries are unable to cope with the sheer scale of Russia’s onslaught of missile threats. Iranian drones and missiles, meanwhile, have depleted an estimated one-third of Patriot stockpiles as the US and the Gulf States launched over 1,100 of these interceptors during the conflict.
The expenditure rate so far has sparked concern about whether the US can sustain its Patriot stockpiles in a prolonged campaign or a peer war.
Lockheed Martin produces about 600 PAC-3 MSEs annually, though it plans to continue rapidly ramping up production.
It emphasized production pace and quantity on Monday, saying that the new PAC-3 ACE “speeds up development, testing, and deployment far beyond traditional programs.”
The firm said it was collaborating with the European defense industry to produce the PAC-3 ACE, an arrangement already in place for the PAC-3 MSE. Some components of that missile are built in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and other NATO countries on the continent.
The older PAC-2 missile is built by Raytheon, which produces about 200 interceptors a year. It plans to partner with German firm MBDA to boost production to about 600 missiles a year in a new Bavarian plant.
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