Signal No. 180 · Ukraine's 500 PAC-3 rounds: approved, years away

The State Department on Friday approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Ukraine of 500 PAC-3 MSE interceptors for Patriot, with spares and logistics support, at an estimated USD 2.1 billion, and notified Congress. "No U.S. funds are involved": Ukraine will pay with donations from Canada, Germany and Norway through the JUMPSTART programme, and with national funds financed by the EU's Ukraine Support Loan, which the Commission opened to PAC-3 purchases in September by derogation from its European-content rule. The principal contractor is Lockheed Martin. The notification gives no delivery schedule.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X that "500 PAC-3 interceptors is a substantial number" and could make an effective package this winter, but that "deliveries may begin only in a few years". Alex Raufoglu, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Washington correspondent, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that deliveries are not expected before 2030. An analyst at German Aid to Ukraine, citing a State Department reply, gave a window from the fourth quarter of 2030 to the fourth quarter of 2033, and said partners could cede places in the production queue to bring deliveries forward. Washington sets the sequence in which paid-for Patriot orders are filled, and moves buyers back as well as forward: in May it told Switzerland its five systems would slip five to seven years because the Iran war had drawn on stocks, and in September Germany took two of Switzerland's fire units to replace those it gave Ukraine.

On Fox News on Sunday Zelenskyy renewed the trade he offered in October, now with a time limit: a month of Patriot missiles from Washington for a month without Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries. In October, two European officials told CNN of a US warning that European PURL purchases could be suspended if the strikes continued.

The other half of Kyiv's request concerns rounds already in stock. On 26 October Yevhen Khmara, Ukraine's defence minister, asked the defence ministries of Germany, Britain, France, Poland and Italy to consider handing over 10 per cent of their interceptor stocks now, Patriot and IRIS-T missiles among them, in exchange for later deliveries Ukraine is contracting under the EU loan. None of the five has announced a transfer; in October Radosław Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, said Poland cannot supply Patriot missiles itself. Each transfer of US-made rounds from a European stock needs State Department consent.

The firm Boxer order under the Arminius project is not before the committee this week. Worth just over EUR 20 billion including VAT, it cannot be placed before February 2027, according to sources cited by German trade press; in the summer it was due in early December. The ministry declined to comment. On 6 August Armin Papperger, Rheinmetall's chief executive, told analysts that Rheinmetall's share of the firm order would be about EUR 12.4 billion and that the decision was expected by year-end. The firm order is still put at about 1,800 vehicles, a large share of them command and Skyranger air-defence variants.

Seven smaller submissions above EUR 25 million, the year's Nos. 63 to 69, are before the Bundestag's budget committee for its sitting on Wednesday, all to be paid from the defence budget. One is a further amendment to the Eurofighter production contract, under which Eurofighter GmbH is building 38 Tranche 4 and 20 Tranche 5 aircraft, and under which 15 of the Bundeswehr's Eurofighters are being converted for electronic warfare. Another buys SPIKE-ER2 anti-tank missiles, specified for the H145M light attack helicopter. The remaining five are image-intensifier sights, troposcatter radio links for the TaWAN tactical network, a field-hospital call-off, 30 mm practice rounds for the Puma and a PAYLOAD 1 top-up. The committee has decided 62 such submissions this year and the ministry plans 38 more, with three sittings left; on top of this week's seven that would end the year at about 107, against the 150 trade reporting expected in September.

Polish police have set up a headquarters for a special operation in the Warmia-Masuria and Podlasie provinces, run with the army, the Border Guard and the special services, Marek Boroń, the national police chief, told RMF FM on Monday. The operation is preventive, he said, after signals that acts of sabotage could take place on the border with the Kaliningrad region in the coming days; reinforcements have come from several provinces, and counter-terrorist units are taking part. Last week, RMF reports, Poland's Military Intelligence Service and allied services warned of possible sabotage on the border with Russia, including border violations by armed groups.

On Friday night police denied any connection with the dispute at the Constitutional Tribunal and tied Thursday's readiness order to "current threats regarding acts of sabotage and subversion"; on Saturday Boroń wrote to officers of "attempts to destabilise our country by foreign intelligence services from the east". A police spokeswoman said the details are confidential.

Refrigeration systems in supermarkets in Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland failed overnight into Monday in what appear to be cyberattacks. Delhaize reported an "IT disruption" affecting cooling in dozens of stores in Belgium and Luxembourg, about 40 in Belgium; Carrefour and Spar stores in Belgium were hit too. Sabcobel, a refrigeration service company, said the systems had been put into defrost mode remotely. ICA and Coop stores in Sweden were affected; one store reported freezers set as high as 50 degrees Celsius, though ICA is not yet calling it a hack. In Ireland 13 stores were affected, and in the Netherlands at least 17 smaller shops by Danfoss's count. In Estonia, attackers reached the control computer of an older refrigeration system in one Selver store and set a freezer to 50 degrees, ERR reports.

Finland's National Cyber Security Centre reported several suspected successful intrusions with limited damage. Christophe Hansen, the EU commissioner for agriculture and food, called the attacks a deliberate attempt to disrupt the food supply chain and said the EU's food security is not threatened, Reuters reports. In October, French police said hackers had taken control of refrigeration in hundreds of supermarkets. No government or company has named a perpetrator.