Lockheed Martin cannot provide any guarantees on the delivery times for Patriot missiles, one of the company's executives said, the Financial Times reports, quoted by Focus.
Brian Dunn, vice president of strategy and business development for missiles and fire control systems, noted that Lockheed Martin is making significant efforts to increase production of the critical PAC-3 interceptor missile amid supply shortages.
In a comment to journalists at the ILA Berlin air show, he sent a message to American partners, in particular Germany, Japan, Poland, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which operate the Patriot air defense system. Ukraine is also known for using these systems: they are particularly effective at intercepting Russian ballistic missiles.
While Dunn noted that the additional capacity "will obviously be able to meet the needs of many users more quickly," he added: "We do not control how these missiles are allocated. "We can't tell anyone where it will end up on that priority list," he said.
According to estimates by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), restoring the Patriot stockpile to the level that existed before the war with Iran could take at least three years.
Lockheed Martin has agreed to increase production of PAC-3 missiles from the current 650 per year to 2,000 by 2033 as part of a $4.7 billion deal with the Pentagon.
President Volodymyr Zelensky recently announced that Britain, France and Germany (the E3 diplomatic format) will help Ukraine develop a European missile defense system.