By Galina Korol | 2026-07-20

For decades, only the United States could build the world's most advanced air-defense interceptor. Ukraine is now set to become the second nation cleared to make it.

The pledge came while rescue workers in Kyiv were still pulling residents from under concrete slabs. Over the past month, Russia has sharply increased its ballistic missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. A ballistic missile reaches its target in minutes, and only a handful of systems can stop one.

"At this point the Patriot is the only system that effectively and reliably shoots down ballistic missiles," Konstantin Krivolap, an aviation expert and former test engineer at Ukraine's Antonov aircraft company, told Kontur.

Supply is the crux. Ukraine burns through interceptors faster than factories can replace them. "There's an unequivocal, serious shortage of interceptor missiles in Ukraine and the world," Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said on United News after another mass attack on Kyiv.

Russia is pressing that advantage. Overnight on July 6, Ukrainian air defenses failed to intercept a single ballistic missile. Krivolap said 30 people died in a mass strike on Kyiv on July 2, and 19 more died after the July 6 attack. Russia keeps building the weapons, he added, estimating that the Votkinsk plant turns out 50 to 60 Iskander-M missiles a month.

An unexpected pledge in Ankara

Against that backdrop, U.S. President Donald Trump made one of the most surprising announcements of the war. Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Ankara on July 8, he said Washington would give Kyiv the right to make Patriots. He called the system very complex but predicted Ukraine would master it fast.

Trump said US industry is already building four plants and could stand up production in two to three months. He cast the move as an answer to critics. "That's pretty cool. This way, you can't complain that we're not giving them enough," he said, adding that Ukraine could simply make the missiles itself. He also floated Tomahawks and other high-end equipment, signaling a shift in American thinking on military aid.

A long road ahead

A promise moves faster than a factory. Krivolap cautioned that a long technical road separates the license from any missile rolling off a Ukrainian line.

Serhiy Beskrestnov, a military expert and adviser to Ukraine's Defense Ministry who uses the call sign Flash, was optimistic. He said he has personally disassembled spent Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) missiles and studied how they are built. On his Telegram channel on July 8, he wrote that Ukraine can begin production under the US license. "Don't listen to the pessimists," he added. A license brings technical documentation, specialist training and supplier contacts, he explained, with American consultants guiding the launch. The real constraint, he said, is time.

Alexander Kovalenko, a military and political analyst for the website InfoResist, offered a similar timeline. Preparing sites, installing equipment and tuning the process could take six months to a year, he told Kontur. Even then, factories ramp up slowly. "When you launch production, you don't go into large-scale production right away," he said.

Kovalenko expects Ukraine to find the engineers it needs. "Our engineers and manufacturers have created rockets that have flown into space," he said, noting that Ukraine builds many types of motors for helicopters and naval vessels. That expertise, he added, is why Russia shut down many joint projects after 2014.

Denys Popovych, a journalist and military analyst, urged caution on timing. Writing on Facebook on July 9, he said the terms of the license remain unknown, as does the amount of groundwork Ukraine has already laid. "If this license descends on us like snow falling on our heads," the wait could stretch into years, he said. Advance preparation would change that.

The world's hardest missile

The PAC-3 ranks among the most demanding products in modern defense engineering. It destroys ballistic targets by slamming into them, and for decades only the United States could make its components, said Yehor Cherniev, a member of Ukraine's parliament and head of its delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He told Kontur that the full US production cycle for one PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor runs about 24 months, with roughly 30 months for its solid rocket motor. In Japan, certifying each modification took three to five years. Germany spent years setting up assembly lines from American parts.

Ukraine will join Japan as the only nations trusted with full PAC-3 production, Kovalenko said. Even so, it will lean on allied supplies for a long time, because domestic output cannot replace the thousands of interceptors it needs overnight. The license still opens doors, including a path into Europe's missile-defense production network.

Cherniev sees homegrown production as both a supply line and a deterrent. "If a potential aggressor grasps that they won't break us from the air and that inevitable destruction awaits them on land, the risk of us being attacked will plummet," he said.