Hegseth Says US Will “Find a Way” to Help Ukraine After Zelensky Air-Defence Plea
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Saturday that the United States will “find a way” to help Ukraine defend itself, after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s plea for more air-defence missiles. Zelensky has framed the appeal to the US as “eliminate Putin’s last advantage”. The Hegseth framing — the most positive US-side language on Ukraine air-defence support since the Iran war redirected Patriot interceptors away from the Ukraine pipeline — lands alongside the Romania drone strike and the Trump no-decision on the Iran deal.
Each Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor costs roughly $4 million and is produced at a constrained rate of around 600 per year industry-wide. The US redirect to the Iran theatre during the war removed several batteries from the Ukraine pipeline. If the Iran deal holds, NATO-side Patriot replenishment to Ukraine could resume in volume; if it collapses, Ukraine faces a sustained gap. The Hegseth “find a way” signal could either mean accelerated transfers from European stockpiles (Germany, the Netherlands, Romania) or new US authorisations of Patriot transfers from regional CENTCOM stockpiles. Either path would significantly constrain Russian airstrike effectiveness in the second half of 2026. Russian Geran-2 attack drones are produced at a rate of around 5,000 per month.