The Patriot air defense system has been in use since the 1980s and 18 countries use it. For the US manufacturer Raytheon, Patriot is a billion-dollar business, which it used to handle entirely from its sites in the United States. However, in the face of ever new wars and conflicts in which drones are increasingly being used, the demand for air defense systems has risen so sharply that Raytheon can no longer keep up with production.
The renowned Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS criticizes in a study (external link) that the US industry has not yet managed to adapt its supply chains to the high demand for important weapon systems such as Patriot. According to Raytheon, it takes three years from order to delivery of a system. On average, the company produces exactly one fire unit per month, i.e. one complete system.
Highly complex system costing a billion
Patriot is a very expensive purchase for customers. A complete system costs around one billion euros. This includes a control station, a radar system, antenna masts and three to eight so-called launchers for the actual missiles. They are fired from container-like containers, which are usually mounted on trucks.
The missiles themselves are also very expensive - and only available in limited quantities. The most modern version, with a range of up to 100 kilometers, costs up to four million euros. This is why they are generally only used against targets such as fighter planes, helicopters or approaching missiles and cruise missiles, but not against comparatively cheap drones.
RTX, through its subsidiary Raytheon, develops and supplies drone defense systems such as the "Coyote" and integrated defense solutions such as the LIDS (Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Defense). These systems include missiles that shoot down threat drones and radars such as the GhostEye for detecting and tracking targets. The company is continuously working to improve its technologies in order to effectively counter the growing threat from unmanned systems.
Bundeswehr procurement list
The first investments under the new procurement plan are due to start as early as October 2025
It is striking that there are only a handful of orders on the procurement list that are to be purchased from US manufacturers. These include around 150 million euros for torpedoes to be fitted to Boeing's P-8A aircraft. According to the procurement plan, the most far-reaching order in financial terms to a US defense company is 5.1 billion euros for Raytheon's MIM-104 Patriot air defense missiles.
