America's Missile Arsenal Is Running Dry, and Ukraine and Our Allies Are Paying the Price

On a Saturday morning in August 2024, Russia fired 27 ballistic missiles at Kyiv. Ukraine's air defense shot down one. Just one.

President Zelenskyy was blunt about why: "Only one ballistic missile was intercepted, simply because there are no interceptors for the Patriot systems."

This isn't a failure of Ukrainian courage or American weapons design. It's a failure of planning. The U.S. has spent months supporting Ukraine's fight against Russia's illegal invasion, the right thing to do, while simultaneously draining its own missile stockpiles faster than factories can refill them. We've gone from over 2,300 Patriot interceptors before the Iran conflict to around 800 today, according to the NPR reporting.

That's not just a Ukraine problem. Nearly 20 U.S. allies, in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, depend on Patriot systems to defend against ballistic missiles. If Iran and Russia keep firing at the rates they have been, and production stays where it is, those allies will eventually be just as helpless as Ukraine was on that Saturday morning.

Why This Matters for Common Security

The Common Good Party's position on Ukraine and NATO is clear: Russia's invasion is an illegal war of aggression. A sovereign nation's right to self-determination is not negotiable. That means Ukraine gets what it needs to survive. Full stop.

But supporting Ukraine with one hand while letting our production capacity wither with the other is half-measure governance. It's the kind of thing that happens when decisions get made in crisis mode instead of being thought through upfront.

The Patriot system was introduced in the 1980s. Raytheon (now RTX) makes both the batteries and the missiles. We've known for months, the article notes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged in June that replenishing stockpiles could take "months and years", that production couldn't keep pace with demand. Yet here we are, with allies running low and Ukraine unable to defend its own capital.

This is a failure of industrial policy. Not ideological disagreement. Not budget constraints we can't handle. A failure to plan.

The Doomsday Clock Is Ticking

There's also a larger shadow here. The Doomsday Clock sits at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest in 79 years. Every conflict that pulls the U.S. and Russia closer to direct confrontation pushes that clock forward. When Ukraine can't defend itself against Russian missiles, the pressure on the U.S. to escalate grows. When allies in the Middle East and Europe worry their own air defenses will fail, alliance cohesion frays. Frayed alliances make miscalculation more likely.

The Common Good Party believes no single person should hold unchecked authority over the most consequential decision in human history. That means we need allies, strong alliances, and the industrial capacity to back them up without betting everything on a president's judgment call in a moment of crisis.