A Patriot missile battery deployed at an Israeli base [EPA]
A Patriot missile battery deployed at an Israeli base [EPA]

As the Middle East war drags on, US stockpiles of Patriot interceptor missiles — a cornerstone of American air defense — have reportedly fallen below 1,700 units. With Washington facing growing strain from simultaneous crises around the world, analysts warn that priority allocation could become a problem if tensions escalate with North Korea or China. Experts are calling on South Korea to strengthen its own missile defense systems and prepare for a long-term shift in how responsibilities are shared within the US-South Korea alliance.

Yoo Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), said Monday that if the United States were forced to redeploy USFK air defense assets to respond to crises elsewhere, South Korea would need to significantly bolster the interceptor stockpiles and production capacity of its own missile defense systems — including the Patriot, the medium-range surface-to-air missile Cheongung-II (M-SAM) and the long-range surface-to-air missile (L-SAM) — rather than relying solely on American support. "The joint management and resupply framework for interceptors between South Korea and the United States during wartime also needs to be made more concrete," he added.

Over the longer term, the issue is expected to affect the division of roles within the alliance. The likelihood has grown that Washington will press its allies to expand their own defense capabilities and ammunition production bases rather than depending on US air defense assets.

South Korea, analysts say, should accordingly work not only to strengthen its missile defense capabilities but also to expand the guided-weapons production capacity and supply chains of its domestic defense industry — developing them in a way that complements the United States' vulnerable ammunition industrial base.

The New York Times earlier reported that US weapons stockpiles have been depleted to "alarming levels," with supplies deployed in Asia and Europe being drawn upon to make up the shortfall.

The Times said US authorities are trying to accelerate weapons production but warned that rebuilding the more than 1,500 Patriot air defense missiles expended in the war against Iran could take more than two years. Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), warned that "this situation cannot but have a significant impact on the calculations of China and Russia."

In response to the reporting, Donald Trump reportedly ordered a hunt for the source of the military intelligence leak.

A recent live-fire surface-to-air missile exercise by USFK air defense units in Palau in the western Pacific — conducted as part of a US Army Pacific-led combined training exercise — is also seen by some as a test of the US military's ability to rapidly disperse and deploy in contingency scenarios. China's Pengpai media outlet recently criticized Washington's consideration of expanding tactical nuclear weapon deployments as an aggressive nuclear policy aimed at compensating for its ammunition shortfalls.


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