{"id":12149,"date":"2026-08-27T17:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/12149\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T17:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:23:12","slug":"us-patriot-missile-shortage-in-europe-beyond-critical-due-to-iran-war-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/12149\/","title":{"rendered":"US Patriot missile shortage in Europe \u2018beyond critical\u2019 due to Iran war, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The US military is experiencing a \u201cbeyond critical\u201d shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe largely driven by US President Donald Trump\u2019s war with Iran, an American defence official in Europe and a Nato official said, raising concerns about vulnerabilities in Nato countries to a potential Russian attack.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The US defence official said the most concerning shortfall involves Patriot missile interceptors, which can shoot down Russia\u2019s high-speed ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Nato official confirmed the low inventories of Patriots among American and Nato forces in Europe. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In the event of a Russian ballistic missile assault on, for example, a military headquarters or power plant, Nato could be in a similar position to Patriot-starved Ukraine and be forced \u201cto take punch after punch in the mouth\u201d, the US defence official said.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In Europe, the American military \u201cdefinitely\u201d does not have enough Patriots to stop any possible sustained ballistic missile attack and would have \u201cvery limited\u201d capability to defend against a single ballistic missile strike or a stray Russian missile that goes off course, the US official said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ukrainian servicemen hit a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike in Kyiv on Thursday. Photo: Reuters\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/5f397b06-9645-4cba-b98e-20e676dad809_97001676.jpg\" title=\"Ukrainian servicemen hit a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike in Kyiv on Thursday. Photo: Reuters\"\/>Ukrainian servicemen hit a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike in Kyiv on Thursday. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">It illustrates the cascading fallout from Trump\u2019s decision to launch a war against Iran, a conflict that reaches the six-month mark on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US military is experiencing a \u201cbeyond critical\u201d shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe largely driven by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2945,4529,7172,7051,57,47,32,156,4264,2437,7,4352,20,71,292],"class_list":["post-12149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-american","tag-atacms","tag-biden-administration","tag-cia-director-john-ratcliffe","tag-donald-trump","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-iran","tag-london","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-patriot","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}