Russia’s 419-Projectile Barrage on Kyiv Exposes Patriot Gap Before Ankara NATO Summit

Great-power air wars have often pivoted on whether defense can scale as fast as offense—the V-1/V-2 blitz of 1944 killed 8,000 Londoners before the Allies overran launch sites, and Israel’s 1991 experience with Iraqi Scuds forced the first combat use of Patriots. Today’s raid fits that lineage: Russia is exploiting a global shortage of expensive hit-to-kill interceptors whose production never ramped after the Cold War, while Ukraine’s Western backers debate re-industrialization reminiscent of the 1950–53 Korean War, when U.S. defense spending tripled in one budget cycle. The episode spotlights two structural trends: cheap, proliferating drones and ballistic missiles increasingly outmatch scarce defensive missiles, and critical supply chains (solid-fuel motors, gallium-nitride radars) are clustered in a few countries, making ‘just-in-time’ arsenals untenable. Whether NATO now commits to 5 %-of-GDP defense outlays and shared licensing—as floated in Ankara—will shape the next century’s deterrence architecture; if not, the offense-dominant cycle visible since WWI’s first air raids may simply continue, with civilians remaining soft targets in protracted interstate wars.