The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the Pentagon was considering diverting military aid meant for Ukraine to the Middle East for use in the US-Israeli war against Iran, as the US military continues depleting its stockpiles of air defenses and other munitions in the conflict.
Since last summer, the US has been sending military aid to Ukraine through a NATO program under which the US’s allies pay for the equipment, known as the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative. The Post report said that the US could divert air defense munitions paid for through PURL for use against Iran.
The US has already begun bringing in air defense systems and munitions from across the globe as it is running low on interceptors. Just over a week into the war, the US began moving the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air defense system, based in South Korea, to the Middle East and also pulling Patriot air defense munitions from stockpiles across the Asia Pacific.
On March 10, the 11th day of the US-Israeli war, Bloomberg reported that the US and its Middle East allies had already fired more than 1,000 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, more than the 600 interceptors Ukraine had received from the US and NATO since Russia invaded in February 2022.
Lockheed Martin currently produces PAC-3 interceptors at about 600 per year and has said it will aim to produce 2,000 missiles per year, but it will take years to reach that level.
The Post report said that a final decision on using the equipment meant for Ukraine hasn’t been made, but Trump suggested he was open to it when asked about the possibility. “We do that all the time,” he said. “We have them in other countries, like in Germany and all over Europe. Sometimes we take from one, and we use for another.”
