{"id":5262,"date":"2026-07-09T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johanno1.se\/half-or-high-risk-1-out-of-2-july-9-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:02:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:02:42","slug":"half-or-high-risk-1-out-of-2-july-9-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johanno1.se\/en\/half-or-high-risk-1-out-of-2-july-9-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Half or high risk, 1 out of 2, July 9, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A bit of a classic now and representative of the Red Storm in Ukraine. The picture is from Bucha or Irpin right at the beginning of the special operation when they still believed they would march into Kiev, so they had booked tables at all the restaurants and brought their parade uniforms \u2013 that’s how it can go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday was a dark day for Ukraine; they have run out of Patriot interceptors and did not shoot down a single Iskander, 23 hit their targets. They still do not have self-produced interceptors against ballistic conventional missiles and still rely on Patriot, NASAMS, IrisT, and SamPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cewqqnd7zdwo<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine is now asking Europe to tap into emergency stockpiles since license-produced PAC3 Patriots in Europe will be delivered only in 2027. Apparently, Ukraine will be allowed to license-produce their own after Trump and Zelensky met in Ankara, but that has a long lead time and, above all, you can accelerate and brake as much as you want, so there will be none in the tubes for the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The week before, UA shot down 98% of all incoming drone threats in a large Russian operation and we reported enthusiastically about it \u2013 the drone defense is like a wall and totalitarian. Moreover, it is now completely Made in Ukraine and nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why does Ukraine have completely run out of interceptors 4.5 years into the war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have still not succeeded in producing their own and have not received any licenses, that’s the short answer; they have tried for several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that the US has shot away 1700 in the Iran war is one reason, of course, but we already know that Trump is hard-driving the US line that Putin must not lose the war significantly more than his predecessor did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it was no longer possible to hold back the elite air force, Trump holds back PATRIOT, and probably NASAMS too, because it gives Putin an opening to use a weapon system he otherwise does not succeed with \u2013 the Krasnov suspicion goes from smoldering to a small flame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know for sure that Europe still does not have anti-drone capability \u2013 for me, that is indisputable. It is underway but we do not have it yet, which also means that our major weapons platforms are very vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RU can operate around 10k FPV drones per day that have some 30km-50km fire control zone, and about 500 Gerans every two days roughly, which reach hundreds of kilometers over the border. They are relatively slow but Europe has had poor control over them anyway, not to mention the very limited ability to combat them when the will to shoot them down finally appeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RU can fire 100 missiles in one operation but naturally has supply limitations, a few minutes flight time until impact in the Baltics depending on where the launch ramps are when they temporarily leave Belarus to fire and then immediately drive back onto “neutral ground”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how many missiles does Russia have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(all figures below are from open sources so there are surely errors somewhere which you will triumphantly point out).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine occasionally combats Grau arsenals and key manufacturing, and the same applies to RU; if a missile is 95% ready, it won’t fly \u2013 it is hard to know how the stockpiles of flight-ready missiles look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we know is that China has built up Russia’s production lines since 2023. The last time I checked, RU had about 2000 missiles in storage-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New production of Iskander is +800 Iskanders\/year<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zircon, which is a bit harder to shoot down despite its anti-ship classification, they produce 120\/year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the missile park is about 1500-2000\/year in production rate roughly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Iran war was a sham operation to drain US stockpiles, the conspiracy theorists can discuss that for the next centuries, but the fact is that +1700 Patriots are consumed and the US has an acute shortage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patriot is produced at about 600\/year, the Germans have gotten license production but are not yet up and running (right?) as Ukraine would get the first ones. Many are clamoring for them, by the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have to buy NASAMS from Raytheon but Norway, if I understand correctly, has production that has increased sharply \u2013 around 2000-2500\/year from 2026. Long queue to buy them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SamPT, which we produce in Europe, is still a few hundred per year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IrisT has had 5000 more missiles produced, Ukraine uses the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many do we have in storage? Not a lot, I guess, because we are stingy with Ukraine; they get nothing right now. Patriots seem to be critically low, NASAMS we must have since it is a standard missile, and SamPT they don’t produce, so probably a low number?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we don’t have many batteries either in Europe, 60 PATRIOT, 36 NASAMS, 10-12 SamPT, and 26 IrisT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn’t end there; all countries that hoard want them for their close protection, so they are not where they would do the most good, naturally. Spain has both NASAMS and Patriot for its own use, for example, even if they have one or a few systems in the Baltics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe is by definition reactive, which means RU will deliver the first strike \u2013 if we change our minds at the last minute, it would be appreciated, and I guess it is being discussed right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Baltics, my favorite area right now, there are 3-4 heavy LV systems depending on the day of the week or if Trump pulls something overnight. During 2026, they will have received more than that, but I don’t know exactly how many are deployed today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine has “dozens” of heavy LV batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is thus an under-dimensioned ground-based defense in the Baltics against missiles that in area is not directly smaller than the area Ukraine usually has to defend against missiles and drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we have not yet been at war, it is not unreasonable that we have not yet understood how vulnerable large weapons platforms are to the drone weapon. The Baltics are not very wide, and RU knows very well that the capitals are defended, which makes the area even smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are more vulnerable today than four years ago, and one needs to understand how to protect them the hard way. Aurora26 clearly showed that we have learned too little from the Ukraine war, and that was recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The elite air force is apparently not optimal for shooting down ballistic missiles; Ukraine is a good example of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The drone weapon is an acute weakness for us that we have worked away over perhaps two years; it is new, and there is an explanation for why, even though we have been quite slow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not having full protection against missiles is indefensible and direct negligence, Cold War weapons that we have built an entire defense industry to protect ourselves against but we do not produce enough \u2013 despite missiles raining over Ukraine about once a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not see this coming, I thought Europe had started producing in large quantities when Trump came to power because it did not take long before it was clear what he was up to, and that was 1.5 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, we have to add another puzzle piece where Europe is weak when we should have been strong.<\/p>\n\n\n

The risk is probably that Russia can threaten with the missile weapon whenever they want a ceasefire and frozen fronts sometime in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answers to all my posts are always that Europe has an enormous retaliatory capability, but whenever you start digging a little, it looks like this \u2013 pure negligence in my opinion by those whose job it is to protect us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rheinmetall says that Merkel was the devil herself and tried to disarm, but now it is 2026 and there has been full-scale war since 2022. Interesting in this context is that here on Johan No.1 we have posted a couple of statements from Merkel in recent years that have been pro-Russian in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We have two clouds of concern in the sky that shouldn\u2019t even be up for discussion, one is that Trump is once again fighting for a ceasefire in Ukraine. If there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, Putin will move his army and attack us point blank, Europe must understand that self-defense applies here. In Ankara, Ukraine seems to have found its style and they do not seem to be yielding to Trump as far as I can see?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/jul\/05\/ukraine-war-briefing-trump-repositions-himself-as-peacemaker-in-long-call-with-putin<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other is that my marker for if there would be conflict in the Baltics just lit up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUntil recently, the U.S. contingent in Estonia numbered between 500 and 700 troops, stationed at Tapa, in southern Estonia, and at other military sites across the country. That number has now fallen to fewer than 100 personnel. Officials have not disclosed any information about future troop movements or the deployment of additional U.S. forces to Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Pulls Most Troops Out of Estonia, No Military Presence Planned Beyond 2027<\/a><\/blockquote>