PARIS — Europe can’t rely on the United States to supply the continent with sufficient quantities of air-defense missiles, and needs to step up local production of interceptors, European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said at the Paris Defense and Strategy Forum on Tuesday.

Kubilius is on a “missile tour” of Europe to discuss with manufacturers how the European Commission can help with missile production, both for Ukraine and the European Union’s own stockpiles.

Ukraine needs around 2,000 missiles a year for the Patriot air-defense system, while the U.S. and the Gulf countries reportedly spent around 800 Patriot missiles in the first five days of the American-Israeli war on Iran, according to Kubilius. U.S. production of the interceptors for the time being stands at 750 Patriot missiles per year, according to the commissioner.

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“You very quickly understand that you cannot rely for all your defense capabilities only on American production,” Kubilius said in a roundtable discussion on Europe’s security architecture. “Americans are not able to produce enough of them. So we need to develop our production.”

European countries should start a crash program to rapidly expand output of European-made air defense systems and interceptors, modeled on the European Union’s 2023 program to boost ammunition production, analysts at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a brief on Monday.

The biggest defense gap for Europe and its allies is against ballistic missiles, Kubilius said in a March 16 speech in Brussels. He said Ukraine faced 900 attacks by Russian ballistic missiles in 2025, with the Patriot system, made by Raytheon, the country’s main means of anti-ballistic-missile defense.

The commissioner kicked off his consultation of European missile and air-defense makers with visits to PGZ and Mesko in Poland, followed by visits to MBDA Germany and Diehl Defence as well as MBDA Italy last week. Kubilius is traveling to Sweden on Thursday, with a planned visit to Saab in Linköping on Friday to discuss Swedish missile capability.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has called on the alliance to boost its air and missile defense by 400%.

The French-Italian SAMP/T system, manufactured by the Eurosam consortium between Thales and MBDA, is the only European alternative to Patriot. The system is capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, with a coming upgrade promising improved anti-ballistic performance. Other European systems such as Diehl’s Iris-T, Kongsberg’s Nasams and MBDA’s MICA have shorter ranges.

Ukraine has received at least two SAMP/T systems, with at least one defending the Kyiv area. President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said earlier this month his country will receive the first unit of the upgraded SAMP/T NG this year.

Still, the European system hasn’t been immune to issues around missile supply, with Zelenskyy in March 2025 citing a constant shortage of MBDA’s Aster missiles.

European missile systems are among the best in the world, and the challenge is to “restore depth” to the continent’s defense industry after 30 years of “peace dividend” that caused significant damage, MBDA Chief Executive Officer Éric Béranger said in the roundtable discussion with Kubilius.

“We realize that it’s not enough to simply have stockpiles, we must be capable of withstanding a war of attrition,” Béranger said. “And the entire industry is ready to do that, and is doing so today. It’s getting itself into battle order, and significant progress has been made since the start of the war in Ukraine.”

MBDA said in March last year it was ahead of schedule to increase production of Aster missiles by 50% in 2026 compared to 2022. The Aster is a complex missile with around 40,000 parts, according to Béranger.