Picture: U.S. Navy

On 17 August, the U.S. Navy awarded Raytheon a 22.9 billion USD, 7-year contract to massively scale up production of the surface- and submarine-launched Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. The funding covers the production, recertification, and modernization of more than 7,000 missiles and aims to raise annual output to over 1,000 units, replenishing critically low Tomahawk stockpiles depleted by strikes against Iran.

In some circles, the deal drew criticism. After all, the United States just launched a massive effort to kickstart and expand production of low-cost missiles that cost up to ten times less per unit and could offer, at least according to some, a more cost-effective alternative. Why spend billions on a legacy system when cheaper options are flooding the market?

Whether that criticism holds depends on what each class of missile actually buys, and for whom. This post breaks modern strike arsenals into three tiers, from multi-million-dollar systems like the Tomahawk down to long-range drones costing as little as 30,000 USD, and explains what each tier can and cannot do. It then assesses which high-low mixes will appeal to which states, from the missile great powers to mid-sized and smaller states across Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific.

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Picture: U.S. Army

“There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

Judged by the volume of recent commentary, the global shortage of ballistic missile interceptors has turned into a commotion.

The alarm is understandable. As the United States has fired an estimated two-thirds of its PAC-3 arsenal in the Middle East and European states appear to have no interceptors left to spare, observers wonder how Ukraine is supposed to defend itself against an increasingly intense onslaught of Russian ballistic missiles. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The inability of the West to defend itself effectively against ballistic missiles across different theaters is the bill coming due for a fantasy Western officials have lived in for decades.

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The well-known arithmetic behind ballistic missile defense explains why.

Interceptors expended across Ukraine and the Middle East will take years to replace. Production lines, though far larger than before 2022, still churn out interceptors in the low- to mid-double digits per month. Meanwhile, the West’s adversaries and competitors — China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia — build ballistic missile arsenals at increasingly industrial scale, outpacing Western suppliers, even amid substantial effort.

What is produced also comes at a steep premium. An interceptor costs several times more than the ballistic missile it is built to defeat, and two or more are often needed to reach an acceptable kill probability, pushing the cost disadvantage of contemporary ballistic missile defense toward ten-to-one or worse. That figure also excludes the upfront cost of the radars, launchers, and command systems needed to make an engagement possible in the first place.

In short, present-day ballistic missile defense imposes a structural reality that favors the attacker over the defender. The Iran War and the attrition of U.S. interceptor stocks have accelerated the problem, but the root cause long predates them. The current situation was therefore entirely predictable. It surprises Western officials because they appear to have believed, wrongly, that ballistic missile defense was a feasible long-term answer — but it never was.

Western states are now scrambling to refill their ballistic missile defense stocks while trying to supply Ukraine with whatever they can to protect its cities, critical infrastructure, and industry. European capitals, alongside Washington, have poured billions into ballistic missile defense and continue to do so. But judged from today’s standpoint, with arguably little to show for it. As the West races to add capacity to existing interceptor production lines, adversary production races ahead faster still. In many ways, the West is running twice as fast to stand still.

Leaving the ballistic missile defense wonderland Western states have made themselves comfortable in begins with accepting that the status quo is untenable. From there, decisionmakers have two options.

The first is to live with the offense-defense imbalance and draw the natural consequence. In a world where the attacker can produce ballistic missiles faster and more cheaply than the defender can produce interceptors, a credible counterstrike capability may be the best available tool for upholding deterrence. Ballistic missile defense still has a role under this approach, but a narrower one: protecting critical assets for limited periods instead of serving as a long-term solution for area defense.

The second is to work thrice as hard to reverse the imbalance by funding capabilities with a realistic chance of bending the cost curve in the defender's favor: interceptor programs designed for mass production at a fraction of the unit cost of legacy systems. Such programs exist in Ukraine and other European states but remain unproven. Still, betting on them is the only plausible way if denial is to remain central to Western ballistic missile defense doctrine.

Decisionmakers can pick one option or, ideally, combine both. The most important thing is to get moving.

Lewis Carroll’s White Queen claimed she could believe six impossible things before breakfast. Western ballistic missile defense policy has needed only one: that legacy-type interceptor production could keep pace with, and challenge, enemy ballistic missile arsenals, including those built at industrial scale. It has lived on that belief for more than two decades. Breakfast, it appears, is finally over.

In case you have missed it: Missile Matters has started offering a paid tier. You can read more about the reasoning and benefits here. Next week's post, for paid subscribers, asks whether states still need high-end long-range strike capabilities once low-cost deep strike has proliferated, and what the right high-low mix can look like. You can subscribe or upgrade your membership here if you don’t want to miss it. Thank you for your support.

Picture: Office of the President of Ukraine

In April this year, President Zelensky announced a new framework agreement permitting controlled surplus weapons sales to partner countries.

In principle, this allows foreign buyers to access Ukraine’s significant and continuously increasing production capacity, expected to reach 55 billion USD in 2026, up from 1 billion USD at the start of the war.

This includes Ukraine’s increasingly capable and diverse deep-strike capabilities, including drones and missiles, which are in short supply across many of Ukraine’s partner countries, including in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Production capacity in this segment alone is quoted at up to 25 billion USD as of 2026.

This post examines the export potential of Ukrainian deep-strike capabilities. I focus on three factors that determine the export viability of Ukrainian drone and missile systems: internal constraints, competitive positioning in the global market, and broader structural factors affecting their exportability.

Internal constraints on Ukrainian deep-strike production

The export framework is built around a surplus rule. The Defense Ministry approved the implementing mechanism on 1 July, and sales across the five permitted categories (including long-range drones and missiles) must draw on Defense Ministry-certified surplus rather than frontline stocks. The first question is whether that surplus exists,

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Picture: Bundeswehr / Lars Koch

Over the last six weeks, Ukraine has suffered heavy missile bombardment from Russia, arguably the most severe since the war began.

In contrast to previous attack episodes, current Russian missile salvos cluster heavily around high-velocity missile systems, notably surface- and air-launched ballistic missiles. Ukraine’s depleted missile defense stockpile appears no longer able to sustain an effective defense.

This post examines the causes and consequences of Ukraine’s missile defense crisis and outlines what to expect over the coming months, including whether the situation can be expected to improve.

Russia's ballistic missile threat: Iskander, Kinzhal, and Zircon

In recent months, the primary Russian missile threat has shifted toward the high-velocity spectrum. At its core are Russia’s ballistic missile capabilities, notably the 9M723 short-range ballistic missile used in the Iskander-M system and the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, an air-launched ballistic missile.

The 3M22 Zircon increasingly features in these salvos as well. Officially unveiled in 2019 and originally advertised as a scramjet-propelled hypersonic cruise missile, it appears in practice to be another type of aeroballistic missile, fairly similar in its capability profile to the 9M723 and Kinzhal. Around 15 were launched in June and July, respectively.

Russia complements these ballistic missile attacks with launches of S-400 surface-to-air missiles repurposed for ground-attack missions. While less accurate and lethal, they still represent a threat to civilian infrastructure, particularly when launched against densely populated areas.

Ukraine’s defense is failing to keep pace. Data from the Ukrainian Air Force, compiled by my colleague Pavlo Krasnomovets⁩, suggests that 180 ballistic and quasi-ballistic missiles (9M723, Kinzhal, Zircon, repurposed S-400 interceptors) were launched by Russia in July, of which 143 could not be intercepted. August looks worse still. Out of 52 ballistic missiles launched, only one successful interception is reported so far.

Why ballistic missile defense is difficult

Ukraine appears increasingly unable to defend effectively against the growing numbers of ballistic missiles Russia is launching. In many ways, this is unsurprising and the natural consequence of the structural reality the high-velocity missile domain imposes.

First, defending against ballistic missile threats is technologically challenging. Ballistic missile defense requires highly optimized interceptor missiles capable of generating a defendable footprint against targets approaching from high altitude at speed and actively maneuvering to evade defenses. This means the interceptor must gain altitude very quickly while retaining high maneuverability and extreme accuracy in its terminal approach.

Second, because defending against these threats requires high-tech solutions, ballistic missile defense is expensive, with individual interceptors costing millions of dollars. In addition, because the demands placed on individual components of these systems are so high, scaling the supply chain to produce large numbers of interceptors is inherently difficult, particularly without long lead times.

Third, unlike with other types of missile systems, operational ingenuity cannot compensate for a lack of technology. Without access to the high-tech systems needed, even the most operationally proficient defender will be unable to mount a credible defense. This is fundamentally different from long-range drone defense, for example, where Ukraine's operational experience has enabled a highly effective defense even without the most advanced technology. In the ballistic missile defense context, this cannot be replicated.

Fourth, velocities, and as a result closing speeds, are so high that defenders must launch interceptors according to a so-called “ripple-fire” doctrine to ensure a higher chance of success. Shoot-look-shoot approaches, by contrast, are only possible against slower threats, where engagement windows are significantly longer. Over the medium to long term, this makes the cost disadvantage of ballistic missile defense particularly daunting.

As such, the difficulties Ukraine experiences in defending against Russian ballistic missiles are neither temporary nor the result of an unfortunate set of circumstances (though short-term developments, such as the Iran War further compressing global interceptor availability, exacerbate the problem). They are the result of the structural reality that the ballistic missile domain imposes on defenders.

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Short-term solutions: passive defense and deep strikes

What, if anything, can Ukraine and its partners do to alleviate the pressure? Over the short term, improving the situation will be difficult, and expanding Ukraine’s options for active defense (the means to effectively engage incoming ballistic missiles) appear largely unavailable.

European Patriot interceptor arsenals have reached the point where military and political officials find it more or less impossible to justify giving away additional stocks. The last confirmed PAC-3 MSE delivery of only 35 interceptors around March 2026, reportedly requiring a major political effort by the German Ministry of Defense to secure, illustrates how scarce available European supply has become.

As such, the best defensive effort Ukraine can likely make in the short term is to strengthen its passive defenses. This means improving the resilience of high-value targets by dispersing and hardening them against attack, including by accelerating efforts to move critical infrastructure underground. Ordering and stockpiling spare parts to rapidly restore destroyed infrastructure will similarly be crucial.

Beyond that, Ukraine can only continue to expand and advance its own deep-strike efforts, focusing on destroying critical targets inside Russia to keep attrition mutual rather than unilateral. Wherever possible, Ukraine will continue to target Russian production capacity, but it is unlikely that any single strike, or succession of strikes, will fundamentally disrupt Russian production of ballistic missiles.

Longer-term solutions: PAC-2 GEM-T production and SAMP/T NG deliveries

By 2027, the situation could improve, even if only relative to the admittedly disastrous baseline of mid-2026.

Later this year, MBDA Germany’s license-production facility will begin producing PAC-2 GEM-T interceptors for Patriot, working to fulfill a 1,000-unit order placed in January 2024 through the NATO Support and Procurement Agency on behalf of Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Spain.

At the capacity originally planned, the German facility will likely produce between 120 and 170 PAC-2 GEM-T interceptors per year, though efforts to expand that capacity may already be underway. In any case, once the facility begins delivering all-up rounds to customers sometime in 2027, this will create a stream of newly built interceptors that can be drawn on instead of increasingly scarce existing stocks. Even then, however, Ukraine could likely expect only a high double-digit to low three-digit number of additional interceptors per year (compared to the 700 to 800-plus ballistic missiles Russia may currently produce).

Beyond PAC-2 GEM-T, Ukraine has ordered four fire units of the SAMP/T NG, the next-generation system of the Franco-Italian competitor to Patriot, which will begin arriving in 2027. France has also pledged to bridge the delivery gap with two current-generation SAMP/T fire units, likely arriving by the end of this year.

With the SAMP/T NG, Ukraine will also take delivery of the improved Aster 30B1NT interceptor, which could offer enhanced capability against ballistic missile threats, notably through a Ka-band radar seeker that provides higher resolution and terminal accuracy than that of the current-generation Aster 30B1.

Beyond 2027, longer-term projects such as Project Freya and other European low-cost ballistic missile interceptor programs may come to bear, though their status remains unknown and difficult to assess at this stage. Quick fixes should not be expected here either.

Conclusion

Ukraine’s missile defense crisis is structural. Ballistic missile defense currently favors the attacker in cost, production speed, and scale, and no short-term delivery or operational fix can offset that imbalance. Until new interceptor supply arrives, passive defense and sustained deep strikes into Russia remain the only meaningful levers Ukraine retains.

In case you have missed it: Missile Matters has started offering a paid tier. You can read more about the reasoning and benefits here. Next week’s post, which will focus on the export potential of Ukrainian long-range drones and missiles, will only be available to paid subscribers. You can upgrade your membership here if you don’t want to miss it. Thank you for your support.

Picture: Missile Matters. Shoutout to the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation for printing this great laptop sticker.

Dear readers,

A few days ago, Missile Matters reached 10,000 subscribers. That’s an incredible achievement, one I would not have thought possible when I started this project. I am using this milestone to introduce some changes and new formats. Most importantly, going forward, Missile Matters will start offering paid subscriptions.

In this post, I want to explain what changes, what does not, and why.

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Why are these changes coming now?

Let’s go back in time.

I started seriously reading about missile-related topics in 2019, fresh out of my bachelor’s studies at the University of Groningen. I cannot say exactly what fascinated me about this technology, but I remember having a hunch that missile systems might become more relevant than they appeared to many at the time.

That hunch carried me through my master’s studies at King’s College London and into a doctoral position at the University of Oslo. There, my PhD project, which began centered on nuclear strategy, gradually turned into a dissertation on conventional long-range strike weapons. This dissertation was submitted in February of this year and will be defended in less than two weeks.

I started Missile Matters in September 2024 to provide analysis on missile technology and the role of missile systems in modern war. My very first post on this site was titled “The Value of Striking Deep: How a Ukrainian Deep-Strike Campaign Can Change the War.” I wrote it because I was frustrated with the lack of understanding of how missile technology would affect the dynamics of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which I predicted would come to favor Ukraine. In hindsight, and I say this with the humility of someone who has been wrong many times, I was spot on.

Since then, the blog has grown far beyond what I ever thought possible, and it is now read in ministries, armed forces, defense companies, newsrooms, think tanks, and universities across Europe, North America, and beyond. That said, I am especially proud of the general readership I have managed to attract — the large number of people who do not necessarily work on these topics in a professional capacity but understand that, for better or worse, it makes sense to stay informed about missile-related developments.

As Missile Matters has grown, it has also become more labor-intensive.

Often, the posts that resonate most with readers are the ones that create the most work: estimates of Russian missile production rates, assessments of global missile markets, analyses of European defense-industrial capacity. Work of this kind requires hours, sometimes days, of research, enabled by years of experience and my professional network in the field. As the blog is increasingly used as a professional resource, it has become difficult to justify keeping it entirely free. Paid subscriptions will allow me to do more of this work, more consistently, and to keep it independent: no sponsors, no advertisers, just analysis funded by readers.

What stays free

All my reactive analysis will remain free. This includes initial assessments whenever relevant missile-related developments occur, battle damage assessments of missile strike events, and commentary on other breaking news related to missile technology. All this will continue to arrive in your inbox at no cost, as it has for the past two years. The entire existing archive also remains free.

The paid tier builds on top of this for those who want to go deeper.

What paid subscribers receive

Paid subscribers will receive three benefits.

First, one to two additional posts per month containing my most comprehensive analytical work on missile capabilities, industries, and markets. These posts will carry free previews, so all readers can see what they cover.

Second, a monthly research digest: a curated overview of the most important reports, papers, and open-source analyses in the missile domain, with my brief assessment of each, so you know what is worth your time and why.

Third, access to a subscriber-only chat room where you can ask written questions and interact with the subscriber community.

Pricing

A paid subscription costs $10 per month or $100 per year.

Readers who want to provide additional support can become founding members for $250 per year, which includes an invitation to a live Q&A call with me three to four times a year where we discuss the most important developments in the missile domain.

Many of you read Missile Matters professionally. If that applies to you, a subscription likely qualifies as a professional expense, and group subscriptions are available at a discount for teams and institutions.

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Thank you

Missile Matters began as a side project and has become one of the most rewarding parts of my professional life. That is entirely due to you, the readers who open these posts, share them, push back in the comments, and send corrections and tips. I am incredibly thankful for that.

If you have found value in this work over the past two years and want to see more of it, becoming a paid subscriber is the most direct way to make that happen. And if you stay on the free list, you remain every bit as welcome here as you have always been.

Additional announcements

Three additional announcements:

1. On Tuesday, 4 August, 13:15 ET/18:15 BST/19:15 CEST, I will go live with for a deep dive into missile and drone technology in the current phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

2. As stated above, I will be defending my PhD on 13 August. PhD defenses in Norway are public, so if any of you are in Oslo and would like to attend, please do so. You can find the details here.

3. There will be a 10k subscriber special in the near future, though probably after the defense. I still have to decide on the format, but a Substack Live, potentially with some guests, seems like a great option.

Thanks again for all your support.

All the best,
Fabian

Picture: screenshot via X

Between 18 and 24 July, Ukrainian drones struck several Wildberries logistics hubs, Russia’s largest online retailer, in a series of attacks. Russian analysts estimated the economic damage at up to 1.3 billion USD, with separate assessments valuing destroyed goods still higher.

The attacks intensify Ukraine’s already expanding long-range strike campaign. But beyond the attritional logic of these strikes, they reveal something about the transformed nature of the Ukrainian state. Charles Tilly famously argued that war made the state and the state made war.

Ukraine’s case suggests a contemporary variant: the state makes the missile, and the missile makes the state.1 Ukraine’s deep-strike capability has done more than expand its military options. In more than one way, it has transformed what Ukraine is on the international stage.

The state makes the missile

The first part of the story is industrial history, and I have covered it in detail before. Early in the war, Ukraine made it a priority to develop, build, and expand its deep-strike capability. What began in 2022 as a crash program to convert existing Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles into a land-attack capability had grown, by mid-2026, into what can reasonably be described as one of the world’s most powerful and diverse deep-strike arsenals.

The 19th Separate Missile Brigade, which in 2022 fired hastily reinstated, previously decommissioned Soviet-legacy Tochka-U ballistic missiles at targets no more than 120 kilometers away, now launches cruise missiles and long-range drones at ranges of thousands of kilometers.

Of course, acquiring this arsenal meant building more than just missiles. It required an industrial base, a planning bureaucracy, targeting infrastructure and processes, and financing arrangements. That is the material precondition the Ukrainian state created. The more interesting question is what this machinery created in return.

The missile makes the state

Deep strike, especially at the scale Ukraine is able to muster, confers what Thomas Schelling famously called the “power to hurt”. A state that can credibly and sustainably hold an adversary’s economy at risk, seemingly at will and with the adversary having only limited means to defend against or respond to the strikes, occupies a different category of actorhood in the international system.

Nuclear weapons offer perhaps the closest precedent. They created a social category, the nuclear weapon state, that exists through recognition and reorders how every other actor treats members in this category. Ukraine has not suddenly become a great power, nor anything akin to a nuclear weapon state. What has emerged is qualitatively different, arguably less dramatic, but still meaningful. Sovereign deep strike has granted Ukraine a level of recognition and agency it did not have before.

No less consequential is what Ukraine’s deep-strike arsenal does to Russia, and how it operates not only on state capacity but on Russian and Ukrainian self-understanding. As commentators have correctly pointed out, the Wildberries strikes destroy the last illusion of a comfortable peacetime existence for Russian society. Increasingly, the crucial variable appears to be what Ukraine wants to target rather than what it can target. Destruction that ran in one direction at the start of the war now runs in both directions four years in. Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign cuts directly against Russian society’s image of itself as powerful, protected, and untouchable, and against its sense of superiority in relation to others, particularly Ukraine.

This is also why the argument does not stand or fall on battle damage assessments. From the perspective adopted here, the extent to which the strikes actually degrade military logistics, supply chains, or Russian state capacity as a whole is of secondary importance. Ukrainian deep strike has a constitutive effect, and that effect persists as long as Ukraine demonstrably possesses and exercises the capability, independent of how quickly destroyed depots are rebuilt, or a damaged refinery is brought back online.

The state the missile made

This constitutive effect has observable implications.

Permission politics, it appears, has ended for good. The Wildberries campaign was, by all appearances, planned, justified, and executed by Kyiv alone. No Western capital was asked. Zelensky publicly answered for the target selection, stating that the facilities supply components for Russian drone production. If anything, the causal chain has reversed: Wildberries’ banking arm was sanctioned by the EU after the strike campaign began, with Western policy following a target set chosen in Kyiv. This sequencing would arguably have been unthinkable for most of this war.

Even more concretely, the campaign is framed as coercion intended to force Moscow into negotiations: pain applied today, relief offered in exchange for concessions tomorrow. The capacity to inflict and withhold pain is a key factor turning Ukraine into a party to the bargaining over the future of Ukraine, Europe, and the wider world, rather than a subject of it. For much of the war, Ukraine’s future was shaped, or at least feared to be shaped, by Western capitals reacting to Russian manipulation of risk. Ukraine now holds the power to manipulate that risk itself. Ukraine has turned from a coerced state into a coercing one.

There is, of course, an irony in how this transformation came about. It was Russia’s full-scale aggression that created Ukraine’s demand for deep strike, ultimately laying the foundation of what Ukraine is today. And it was Western refusal, and at times inability, to meet Ukraine’s demand for deep-strike capabilities, including political authorization for target selection, that greatly accelerated Ukraine’s indigenous long-range drone and missile efforts, ensuring that Ukraine would eventually field a sovereign capability in the fullest sense. Moscow, Berlin, and Washington are therefore co-authors of Ukraine’s missile arsenal and of the state it has become, even if in different respects and to different degrees.

The missile at the table

The implications extend to the negotiating table. Capabilities can be capped on paper, and production can, in principle, be limited by agreement. Actorhood is harder to regulate. Once the international system has come to recognize a state as one that holds the power to hurt, that recognition is unlikely to be withdrawn by treaty. Any settlement that seeks to constrain Ukraine’s deep-strike arsenal would, in negotiating over it, tend to affirm the very status the arsenal created and that Russia will seek to limit.

This is worth keeping in mind as pressure for a negotiated end to the war grows. The Ukrainian state that enters those talks differs in important respects from the state Russia invaded in 2022: a missile power in its own right, retaining the power to hurt, bargaining in its own name. Russia will be negotiating with the missile on the table and state the missile made.

Picture: Anduril

On 15 July, the U.S. Department of War announced a new framework agreement with three low-cost cruise missile suppliers — Anduril, CoAspire, and Zone 5 Technologies — for nearly 28,000 units. Days earlier, Anduril announced a new agreement with the Polish defense manufacturer PGZ to produce Anduril’s cruise missile systems in Poland.

Both…

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Picture: Bundeswehr / Lars Koch

The annual NATO summit in Ankara has resulted in an unusually large number of license production agreements for missile systems.

Two license production deals deserve particular attention: the American-Ukrainian announcement to license-produce Patriot interceptors in Ukraine, and the German-Ukrainian agreement to license-produce Bars mini cruise missiles in Germany. Both cases are illustrative, as they occur under very different structural conditions, both in terms of the technological complexity of the licensed missile system and the industrial environment in the producing state.

This post explains the logic behind licensed missile production before discussing the two licensed production agreements.

License production of missile systems

Licensed production agreements grant a foreign government or firm the right to manufacture a weapon system domestically under license from the original developer, typically involving significant technology transfer and local assembly using imported or co-produced components. In return, the licensor receives royalties or fees for access to the intellectual property.

In principle, such agreements benefit both parties. The licensee gains domestic industrial capacity, technological know-how, and reduced procurement costs. The licensor secures market access and profit. Licensing can also expand the missile system's global supply, potentially increasing the licensor’s revenue and market share more broadly.

Beyond the economic logic, license production agreements have historically served as political tools. Given the often significant intellectual property transfers involved, governments and manufacturers are typically selective in granting them, and doing so signals a degree of trust and political alignment.

For example, at the turn of the 1960s, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and West Germany agreed under a NATO memorandum of understanding to co-produce the U.S.-origin MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile in Europe, embedding American missile technology into Europe’s industrial base. From the late 1950s, under Sino-Soviet military-technical cooperation, China obtained the S-75 (SA-2) system and began producing it as the HQ-1. After Soviet advisers were withdrawn in 1960 amid the Sino-Soviet split, Moscow suspended assistance, and China reverse-engineered and progressively indigenized the design.

License production of Patriot interceptors in Ukraine

The license production agreement that has received the most attention is Trump’s announcement to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot interceptor missiles — desperately needed as Russia’s ballistic missile barrage of Ukraine intensifies. Details on the agreement remain murky. It is not even clear which Patriot interceptor Ukraine will be licensed to produce, though the PAC-2 GEM-T is the most likely candidate.

Currently, only Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is licensed to produce PAC-3 MSE interceptors, at a low rate of around 30 units per year, though discussions to increase this rate are ongoing. Japan has produced Patriot interceptors under license since the late 1980s, beginning in the PAC-2 era and moving to the PAC-3 after a 2005 US–Japan licensing agreement, with MHI-built PAC-3 rounds fielded from around 2009. Only in December 2025 did MHI contract to produce the newer PAC-3 MSE domestically

Outside Japan, the only other country granted a license to produce Patriot interceptors is Germany, which will begin producing PAC-2 GEM-T interceptors at a new facility operated by MBDA Germany later in 2026. In June 2024, Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall signed an MoU to localize advanced military technologies in Germany. In May 2025, Rheinmetall stated its ambition to produce PAC-3 MSE interceptors in Germany as part of a proposed joint venture with Lockheed Martin. Rheinmetall CEO Papperger cited European demand for 250–300 PAC-3 MSE per year, which Rheinmetall’s production capacity could meet. Since then, no further progress has been reported, and it now appears that licensed production efforts related to the PAC-3 MSE have been effectively discontinued.

It remains unclear why negotiations over PAC-3 MSE production in Germany stalled, whether the American manufacturer opted to prioritize domestic expansion instead, or whether the U.S. government effectively vetoed the technology transfer. Whatever the reason, it is unlikely to be overturned in Ukraine’s case. Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T license production, therefore, remains the most plausible course of action.

In addition, even localizing production of the less advanced PAC-2 GEM-T interceptor will be anything but easy. License production only makes sense for Ukraine if it expands the global supply chain for Patriot interceptors, meaning qualified Ukrainian suppliers must be identified and certified for components such as the IMU, battery, warhead, fuze, solid-rocket motor, and seeker. Given that Ukrainian manufacturers have little to no experience in air defense missile production, this process would take considerable time.

For comparison, the license production process for Germany, from the announcement of the PAC-2 GEM-T production line in January 2024 to the delivery of the first interceptor scheduled for 2027, will have spanned over three years. That timeline was aided by the vast network of potential suppliers already available in Germany, which, as far as can be assessed, does not currently exist in Ukraine. Ukrainian industry, while world-leading in long-range drone defense, has limited to no experience in ballistic missile defense.

Any license production agreement and technology transfer will therefore require a longer-term effort, one further complicated by the need to disperse component production and final assembly, or even move them underground, given that any such facility would constitute a high-value target for Russian strikes. An alternative could be to rely, at least in part, on a broader network of European suppliers to supply a Ukrainian final assembly facility. The extent to which this will be pursued remains to be seen.

Even if a license production agreement does not yield short-term success, it remains an important step and a win for Ukraine. Should the war end before any Patriot facility comes online, Ukraine would still become part of the global Patriot supplier network, which could be highly lucrative and would advance Ukraine’s own defense-industrial ambitions in this space.

License production of Bars mini cruise missiles in Germany

A different license production agreement, but no less consequential, concerns plans to license the production of Bars mini cruise missiles in Germany. An agreement to that end was signed between the German Minister of Defense and the Ukrainian Foreign Minister in Ankara.

The name “Bars” refers to a family of ground-launched low-cost one-way effectors used by Ukraine. The baseline Bars reportedly has a range of 700-800 kilometers and an unspecified payload. Its existence was first publicly revealed in April 2025, with its appearance unveiled in December that year. A modified version, the Bars RS, was exhibited at Eurosatory 2026, extending the missile’s range to 1,000 kilometers and carrying a 22-kilogram payload. Variants with 60- and 105-kilogram payload capacities are also reportedly available, with the increased payload presumably coming at the cost of a proportional reduction in maximum range. The Bars RS was involved in Ukraine’s recent successful strikes against Moscow and is generally reported to have seen significant combat use.

The Bars missile family is equipped with a small, top-mounted turbojet engine. Past imagery of the missile depicted the Kingtech K-450, a small, lightweight turbojet manufactured in Taiwan. That engine has a relatively low thrust of 0.44 kilonewtons, which, together with the missile’s somewhat clunky design and correspondingly higher drag, is the main reason for the Bars’ comparatively low average speed (around 400 to 450 kilometers per hour). That said, given the engine’s top-mounted design rather than integration into the fuselage, replacing it with an alternative, potentially higher-thrust engine, should be fairly straightforward.

Similar to the undisclosed Ukrainian manufacturer of the Bars, the German license production partner is unknown. That said, there are several plausible candidates in Germany. Among them is Diehl Defence, which already has extensive engagements with Ukrainian missile manufacturers and could feasibly produce the majority of components — including the warhead, sensors, and fuselage — in-house, while sourcing the rest from external suppliers. Diehl could, for instance, either continue importing the Kingtech engine previously seen on the Bars or localize the supply chain by sourcing from German engine suppliers such as ADW (recently acquired by MTU) or Jetcat, should they be able to offer suitable products in this class.

The license production agreement is significant for two reasons.

First, the missile’s relatively simple design, combined with German manufacturers’ experience in the field, means substantial numbers could likely be produced quickly. In many ways, this low-tech, high-experience combination is the opposite of the high-tech, low-experience dynamic described above for Patriot. Under the current agreement, all Bars missiles built in Germany will initially go to Ukraine, providing the potential to boost output and employment for the system in the short- to medium-term.

Second, even though the entire German supply will initially go to Ukraine, there is the potential to divert some output to German stocks if desired. Short of that, the agreement still contributes to Germany’s industrial resilience by building a low-cost cruise missile supply chain for a system that currently has no domestic equivalent. Should it become necessary, the resulting experience and supply chain infrastructure could be redirected to other programs to quickly scale the output of this weapon class.

Image: Fire Point

During the night of 26 to 27 June, Ukraine conducted what was arguably one of the most successful individual long-range strikes into Russia of this war, targeting the Titan-Barrikady research and production center in Volgograd with FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles.

The strike is the latest in a series of apparently successful Flamingo attacks, raising the prospect of an increasingly effective Ukrainian heavy missile capability and pointing to progress in closing a long-standing gap in Ukraine’s long-range strike arsenal. This post reviews the latest Flamingo strike and situates it within the system's known and suspected strike history to assess its operational trajectory.

Flamingo cruise missile strike on the Titan-Barrikady plant

Ukrainian sources reported that five missiles were launched on the night of 26 June, three of which struck the Titan-Barrikady facility. The fate of the remaining two has not been disclosed, though interception or systemic error is the likely explanation. Volgograd governor Andrey Bocharov acknowledged damage to a production facility and at least ten injuries.

Ground-level imagery showed collapsed girders, flattened walls, and wrecked machinery, consistent with the detonation of roughly half a ton of high explosive per warhead. One missile struck workshop 38, the plant’s primary production building, reportedly housing machine tools, cranes, and assembly equipment. A second Flamingo hit workshop 2, though open reporting does not establish its specific function. The third impact struck an unidentified workshop.

The strike’s effects on Russian production capacity hinge on redundancy. Titan-Barrikady is a node for Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile launcher assembly and contributes to Russian strategic missile programs, including the RS-24 Yars road-mobile ICBM. Damage to workshop 38 and other affected halls could, in principle, cause delays, particularly if they housed non-substitutable machine tools or fixtures. Available evidence does not, however, presently support confident battle damage assessment.

Previous strikes on high-value industrial targets suggest localized disruption rather than lasting production bottlenecks. Ballistic missile launch cadence did decrease in the two months following Ukraine’s Flamingo strike on the Votkinsk plant, an effect some analysts attributed to that strike, but it has since rebounded. The ongoing frequency of Russian ballistic missile attacks suggests that current ballistic missile production capacity may be as high as ever.

Flamingo strike history since August 2025

That said, should Ukraine be able to expand the scale and intensity of Flamingo attacks against Russian industrial targets, the interdiction effects of its strategic air campaign could become increasingly severe.

To understand how Flamingo employment has evolved since the capability was first announced in August 2025, I compiled all confirmed use cases, building on a previous analysis by Pravda Ukraine and supplementing it with additional confirmed instances. In total, I count ten confirmed use cases since August 2025, including the most recent strike against Titan-Barrikady (see table below). This figure almost certainly undercounts the true number, particularly for unsuccessful strikes. Flamingo volleys that fail to reach their targets or cause significant damage receive limited to no open-source coverage or confirmation from the Ukrainian armed forces, and hence fall below the radar.

The data is too scarce to support generalizable conclusions, but several observations can be made. First, the Titan-Barrikady strike is the first confirmed case in which several missiles unambiguously reached and impacted within the target area. In virtually all other cases, at most one missile scored a hit. The notable exception is the September 2025 strike against the Skif-M production plant, where Ukraine may have scored several hits, though this remains contested and the case is generally underreported relative to its potential significance. The ability to land several missiles on target, not just one, is critical for disrupting larger facilities and preventing rapid repair.

Second, targeting has narrowed toward Russia’s missile production base. Early strikes spanned an FSB security outpost, a power plant, and a munitions depot. Later cases concentrate on manufacturing capacity, including the Votkinsk, VNIIR-Progress, and Titan-Barrikady production plants, suggesting that Flamingo’s primary operational role may now be centered primarily on degrading Russia’s war-industrial output. At the same time, Ukraine does not seem to intend to use the Flamingo to strike oil and gas infrastructure, instead relying on long-range drones for that task.

Third, volley sizes remain relatively small. Available data suggests Ukraine has launched at most six Flamingos per strike, with the last three reportedly involving five each. This is inconsistent with the Ukrainian manufacturer FirePoint’s stated output of three missiles per day, which continues to appear exaggerated.

Fourth, strikes remain relatively spaced, even if the cadence may be accelerating. Confirmed attacks have occurred on average every 4.5 weeks, though the last four confirmed strikes averaged roughly 3.5 weeks apart, and the last three clustered within an eight-week window. Whether this reflects increasing production capacity, reduced Russian air defense coverage improving the probability of success and therefore of open-source confirmation, or both, cannot be determined from available data.

The future of the Flamingo cruise missile

Significant uncertainties around the Flamingo remain. For example, it is unclear how many repurposed AI-25TL turbofan engines remain in FirePoint’s inventory to produce Flamingo missiles under the current design. While the company is reportedly building an in-house engine production facility, progress remains uncertain from open sources, and overall production capacity falls short of stated ambitions.

Accuracy is also still below what the manufacturer and the Ukrainian armed forces would likely want. Across the last four use cases, the Flamingo reached its target twice but failed to inflict significant damage because the missiles missed their likely intended aimpoints. The fix is either improved sensor components to reduce CEP or higher production capacity, enabling larger volleys, which would improve the statistical probability of hitting an aimpoint even without accuracy gains.

That said, the recent operational record is encouraging and suggests the gap between manufacturer claims and actual performance may have narrowed. The Flamingo remains Ukraine’s most promising heavy missile program of record, and a critically needed one if Ukraine intends to hold at risk larger industrial facilities and the supply chains most relevant to Russia’s war effort.

Picture: Frankenburg Technologies

On 22 June, Bloomberg reported that Estonian and UK-based missile manufacturer Frankenburg Technologies, which recently opened its first production facility in Latvia, is finalizing 100 million euros in Series B funding to develop and manufacture an anti-ballistic missile defense system.

According to the report, Frankenburg seeks to build a system competitive with the American Patriot at a substantially lower price point. After Ukrainian manufacturer FirePoint, Frankenburg Technologies is the second European missile maker to announce a push for a low-cost ballistic missile defense solution.

This post reviews the increasingly dynamic and competitive ballistic missile defense landscape in Europe, assesses the competitive positioning of the new entrants, and examines the implications of the development project.

The European ballistic missile defense landscape in 2026

Until now, European customers have had access to essentially two ballistic missile defense systems: the American Patriot, equipped with either PAC-3 MSE or PAC-2 GEM-T interceptors, and the Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG system, equipped with Aster 30 B1 and, soon, Aster 30 B1NT interceptors. South Korean and Israeli options may also be available under some circumstances.

Supply chains for both systems are stretched. The Patriot supply chain is growing but supports 18 customers, including the United States, and lead times are correspondingly long. In 2022, Switzerland ordered five Patriot fire units, with delivery originally scheduled between 2026 and 2028. Following repeated reprioritization of production slots due to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, delivery slipped to at least 2034, triggering a minor diplomatic crisis between Bern and Washington.

The SAMP/T supply chain is also operating at or near capacity, but its significantly smaller customer pool, currently five (including Denmark’s recent order), means that additional capacity added for fire units and interceptors over the coming years will be distributed across fewer actors, reducing lead times. Denmark’s order indicates that new customers currently have to wait about two to three years for a SAMP/T fire unit, compared to up to seven years for a Patriot fire unit, with similar disparities likely to exist for interceptors.

The outstanding question with SAMP/T remains its capabilities. Reports from Ukraine indicate that its performance has at times fallen significantly short of Patriot’s, particularly in ballistic missile defense. Switzerland’s decision to stay with Patriot throughout its procurement difficulties, rather than switching to SAMP/T as was considered, lends some credibility to these reports, even if there are hopes that the introduction of the Aster 30B1NT interceptor will help close the gap to Patriot.

Beyond Patriot and SAMP/T NG, European customers currently lack alternatives. Diehl Defence is developing the IRIS-T SLX, which will reportedly offer some capability against theater ballistic missile threats, but the interceptor is not expected to be available until around 2029 to 2030. Switzerland reportedly considered it a bridge-gap solution, though it ultimately decided against it, likely because it was seeking a more optimized ballistic missile defense solution.

The current ballistic missile defense landscape, characterized by a limited number of suppliers, long lead times, and unresolved questions over capability, leaves room for potential new entrants to exploit. This is especially the case because the high per-unit cost of available fire units and interceptors, especially for Patriot, but also for SAMP/T, renders ballistic missile defense prohibitively expensive, especially in drawn-out conflict scenarios.

As such, it is unsurprising that new actors such as Frankenburg Technologies and FirePoint seek to exploit this market gap. And as the next section shows, their product is, in principle, viable.

Low-cost ballistic missile defense

Low-cost ballistic missile defense interceptors enjoy advantages over legacy systems, even when their individual performance falls well short of that of Patriot or comparable systems.

This is in part a function of how missile warfare has shifted from individual engagements using limited numbers of projectiles, as seen in the 1990s and early 2000s, to mass salvo warfare, in which defenders must be prepared to sustain ballistic missile defense over periods far exceeding a few days or weeks, and where arsenals may need to be reconstituted during an ongoing conflict. Legacy systems struggle to meet these demands.

The key metric in today’s environment is arguably not how reliably a single interceptor destroys a single missile, but rather what it costs to achieve a required intercept probability across multiple shots and salvos, and the ability to reconstitute arsenals in an ongoing conflict environment. Here, low-cost, mass-producible interceptors have an advantage — as shown in the figure below — provided they meet minimum requirements.

Assuming a per-unit cost of $7 million per Patriot PAC-3 MSE, as per recent export contracts, and a (generous) individual intercept probability of 70 percent per shot, it will typically be necessary to allocate two to three interceptors per target to meet operational requirements of 80 to 95 percent intercept probability per engagement, resulting in an engagement cost of $14-21 million per incoming ballistic missile. This makes clear why, across multiple engagements and salvos, ballistic missile defense quickly becomes prohibitively expensive, not even accounting for the manufacturer’s ability to resupply the customer in an ongoing conflict.

Several low-cost, lower-intercept-probability ballistic missile defense interceptors outperform the PAC-3 MSE at the engagement and salvo levels. For example, a ballistic missile defense interceptor with an intercept probability of “only” 20 percent but a per-unit cost of around $1 million falls below the PAC-3 MSE cost curve at relevant operational thresholds. Of course, this scenario requires the manufacturer to supply up to six times more missiles to the customer for the cost advantage to be relevant. However, if the manufacturer can do so, a competitive advantage can emerge, increasing with the expected intercept rate.

A new approach to ballistic missile defense

As explored in a previous post, the history of ballistic missile defense suggests that developing the types of interceptors Frankenburg Technologies and FirePoint envision is anything but straightforward.

Even accepting significantly lower individual intercept rates still requires building a functioning interceptor capable of maintaining control authority at high altitude and translating sensor inputs into steering outputs with high precision, while integrating the missile system into a broader suite of enablers, including command and control, radars, and launchers. MBDA’s difficulties in bringing SAMP/T up to speed, despite decades of experience in the field, illustrate the challenges involved.

That said, a key advantage for new entrants may be that, rather than attempting to replicate legacy system capabilities, they can approach the problem with a clean slate, prioritizing affordability and production scalability from the outset. This is broadly analogous to what European and American startups such as Anduril, Zone 5 Technologies, Castelion, and Destinus have done in the long-range strike segment. Whether that success can be replicated in ballistic missile defense remains to be seen.

Europe’s last frontier

It also bears emphasizing that if Europe is serious about strategic autonomy in key capabilities, it cannot avoid addressing its dependence on the United States for ballistic missile defense.

In many respects, ballistic missile defense remains the last European frontier of defense technology, where structural dependence on American suppliers persists, and moving away from them comes at a very high cost. Switzerland’s decision to stay with Patriot even under otherwise untenable procurement conditions, and Denmark’s shift away from it, which arguably required a credible U.S. invasion threat against Greenland as a motivating factor, illustrate the point.

From this perspective, the competitive pressure that new entrants such as Frankenburg Technologies and FirePoint could bring to the European ballistic missile defense market is welcome, even if their ultimate success remains to be seen.

Screenshot: Security Service of Ukraine

On 18 June, Ukraine launched its largest long-range drone attack on Moscow since the invasion began, striking the Gazprom Neft oil refinery in Kapotnya, around 15 kilometers from Moscow’s city center, for the second time within a week.

The number of Ukrainian long-range drones involved in the attack is not known. Russian sources put the nationwide total at over 550 drones destroyed on 18 June, with roughly 180 of those engaged approaching Moscow itself. Several nonetheless reached their targets, as seen in video imagery of the attack, triggering large fires and explosions. A small number of cruise missiles may have also been involved in the attack.

The raid represents one of the most successful Ukrainian long-range strike attacks to date. It is also indicative of a broader shift in the dynamics of strike warfare between Russia and Ukraine, demonstrating that the unforgiving nature of missile defense, which Ukraine has experienced for years, has finally begun to haunt Russia as well.

Air defense attrition

The 18 June raid did not occur in a vacuum. It followed months of systematic Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s ground-based air defense network, which measurably thinned out the layers of defense protecting Moscow’s approaches.

Radars have taken the heaviest toll. Between March and May, Ukraine’s General Staff reported 24 radar systems damaged in Crimea alone. April saw a further 25 air defense systems struck, with radars again the largest category, alongside losses of Tor, Buk, Osa, and Pantsir systems. Several S-400 and S-300V components, engagement radars, surveillance radars, and launchers were destroyed in strikes near Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, and Dalne over the same period.

Ukraine’s SBU claims its Alpha unit destroyed or disabled roughly half of Russia’s operational Pantsir-S fleet in 2025 alone. This figure cannot be verified independently. However, it appears to be directionally consistent with the confirmed count of 45 Pantsir losses (damaged or destroyed) since 2022, a figure that has been growing more strongly in recent months.

The cumulative effect is an air defense system with fewer intact layers and reduced sensor coverage feeding whatever interceptors remain. Remaining air and missile defense systems must be spread over an increasingly large area, as the range of Ukrainian long-range strike systems has grown and the number of attack vectors has multiplied.

Interceptor shortage

Until very recently, interceptor scarcity has been discussed almost exclusively as a Ukrainian problem. Ukraine’s interceptor shortage, particularly in ballistic missile defense, remains one of the most pressing short- to medium-term issues facing the Ukrainian armed forces. It now appears, however, that interceptor shortages are increasingly affecting Russia as well.

The first substantive reports indicating that this was becoming a serious concern for Russia emerged in November 2025. At the time, Russian crews were observed loading ground-based Osa-AKM launchers with outdated 9M33M naval interceptors and operating Buk launchers with only one or two rounds. In December that year, analysis by the Royal United Services Institute concluded that Russia was expending more air defense interceptors than it was producing.

In April this year, signs of concern became more pronounced when Russian military bloggers reported a serious shortage of air-defense missiles, particularly for the Pantsir system. This occurred against the backdrop of Russia continuing to maintain, and indeed expand, the dense air and missile defense ring around Moscow, comprising both shorter- and longer-range systems, an effort that likely soaked up additional reserve stockpiles on top of those already expended. Most recently, reports have begun to emerge suggesting that Russia may also be facing a growing shortage of S-300 and S-400 interceptors.

It remains extremely difficult to confirm these reports from open sources, given that comparable insight into the Russian defense industry does not exist compared with the West. What is known, however, is that while Russia has likely procured tens of thousands of interceptors across the service lives of its Pantsir, S-300/400, and other air defense systems, consumption over the last several years has been very high, not least because Russia has repurposed thousands of interceptors into surface-to-surface missiles in an effort to further overwhelm Ukraine’s missile defense.

It is also documented that Russian interceptor and strike-weapon production both depend on Western-origin microelectronics sourced through the same narrow, sanctions-evading import networks, rather than dedicated, weapon-specific supply lines. There is also clear production overlap between offensive and defensive missiles in solid-rocket propellant and warhead explosives. Given Russia’s continued investment in expanding long-range drone, cruise missile, and ballistic missile production, it follows that this likely comes at the cost of proportional growth in its interceptor industry.

Strategy in the age of proliferated deep strike

Russia is increasingly experiencing the unforgiving logic of missile defense. Under most circumstances, the attacker retains an advantage over the defender in the missile domain, owing to the cost disadvantage of interceptors relative to offensive strike capabilities and the more complex system architecture of interceptors, at least in the context of legacy systems.

Ukraine has been fighting against this structural dynamic for years. The United States, Israel, and the Gulf states have experienced it firsthand in recent months. European states would face the same in a war against Russia.

Short of some technological breakthrough that comprehensively shifts the offense-defense balance in the missile domain back toward the defender, the age of proliferated deep strike, which the world is arguably entering now — characterized by the spread of deep missile and long-range drone arsenals to a growing range of state actors — will bring growing vulnerability across the international system. Unless wars and conflicts are settled quickly, within days or weeks of their onset, missile defense arsenals will not be able to keep pace with threats, at least not the more complex ones.

Picture: Fire Point via X / Screenshot from video

On 3 June, Ukrainian missile manufacturer Fire Point published a video on X showing a test flight of the FP-7.X ballistic missile interceptor. If successfully deployed, the Ukrainian ballistic missile defense program could address the increasingly severe Patriot interceptor shortage the country faces and Europe’s dependence on the United States for ballistic missile defense.

The FP-7.X and Fire Point’s broader ballistic missile defense ambitions raise two questions. First, does the interceptor offer a competitive alternative to Patriot? Second, will Fire Point be able to deliver on its promise? This post offers some initial answers.

Project Freya

Project Freya is a Ukrainian missile defense initiative developed by Fire Point, designed to intercept ballistic missiles such as Russia’s 9M723 Iskander-M. At its core is the FP-7.X interceptor, a missile derived from the Soviet-era 48N6 used in the S-400 system.

Rather than developing components from scratch, Fire Point is assembling the system from off-the-shelf European hardware and open-source software. The company is reportedly considering Hensoldt’s TRML-4D and Thales’ Ground Master 400 radars for early warning, Leonardo’s Kronos land radar for tracking and target designation, and Kongsberg’s Fire Distribution Center for command and control, among others, all integrated via NATO Link 16.

Fire Point also appears to be relying heavily on external partners at the component level. Diehl Defence, which recently signed a technology cooperation agreement with the company, may supply the seeker technology used in the FP-7.X for terminal homing and end-game corrections.

This approach prioritizes development speed and cost-efficiency over vertical integration, representing a somewhat novel model for Ukrainian missile manufacturers. Whether it can translate into operational performance remains an open question.

Ballistic missile defense economics

At the center of Fire Point’s promise is its ability to produce interceptors more cheaply and more quickly than existing alternatives, even if individual interception rates may not immediately match those of the Patriot PAC-3 MSE or the Aster 30 interceptors used in SAMP/T. In principle, this is a compelling economic argument.

In a 2024 export deal, Germany paid roughly USD 880 million for 120 Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptors, implying a per-unit cost of around USD 7.3 million. (Note that this figure includes surrounding services such as warranty provisions and logistics, which can account for 30 to 40 percent of the total price.) Assuming an individual intercept probability of 70 percent per PAC-3 MSE, achieving a 90 percent likelihood of destroying an incoming target requires launching two interceptors at a combined cost of 14.6 million USD.

Now assume Fire Point develops a cheaper, mass-producible alternative at “only” 1 million USD per round. Even with a reduced individual intercept probability of 50 percent, reaching the same 90 percent threshold requires four interceptors at a total cost of 4 million USD, roughly 27 percent of the Patriot package.

Even at an increased per-unit price of 1.5 million USD and an even lower intercept probability of only 30 percent, the Fire Point interceptor package would still cost only around 72 percent of the equivalent PAC-3 MSE salvo at the 90 percent intercept threshold. If the interceptor can also be manufactured faster and is ITAR-free, a compelling case for the FP-7.X (or whatever the final product will be called) emerges.

The technological barrier

The story sounds good in theory. But moving from theory to practice is hard, especially in ballistic missile defense. Nothing demonstrates this better than the operational history of the Patriot program itself.

In 1991, official claims of near-perfect Scud intercept rates collapsed under post-war scrutiny, with independent assessments putting the kill rate at near zero. By 2003, the system had improved sufficiently to defeat every Iraqi ballistic missile it engaged, though fratricide incidents kept its reputation mixed. In the 2010s, Saudi interception claims remained contested and independent verification limited, with prominent voices still characterizing the program as a failure. The war in Ukraine finally provided vindication of the system, demonstrating its capability against a peer-level ballistic missile threat, even if its overall track record remains far from perfect.

The Patriot program eventually became a success, first and foremost, because of the institutional discipline of the U.S. Army and political decision-makers, which sustained the system through operational failures, and the iterative technological improvements implemented over the decades by talented engineers, which, step by step, enhanced the system's capabilities.

In many ways, the same pattern is now repeating with SAMP/T. When the system arrived in Ukraine and was first confronted with a ballistic missile threat in an operational peer-on-peer environment, it fell short of expectations. MBDA’s engineers are now engaged in the same iterative improvement process, for example, by deploying an improved Ka-band radar seeker that offers greater precision during the terminal approach, addressing one of the key shortcomings identified in the previous generation of interceptors.

Disrupting history

The institutional history of the Patriot and SAMP/T programs challenges Fire Point’s narrative that it can deploy an effective ballistic missile defense interceptor quickly. History shows that in ballistic missile defense, performance gains are hard-earned through operational experience and disciplined program management. If Fire Point wants to make good on its promise, it would have to disrupt this historical pattern.

Of course, nothing suggests that this would be fundamentally impossible. Ukrainians have repeatedly demonstrated that they can innovate faster than people give them credit for, and that, under the operational conditions in Ukraine, time often moves faster than it does elsewhere. That said, taking on the ballistic missile defense challenge is arguably as demanding as it gets, at least from a technological perspective, and operational ingenuity can only get you so far as a substitute.

All this is to say that even reaching an intercept rate of “only” 30 percent will be difficult, especially within a short timeframe.

Picture: Russian Ministry of Defense

Russian conventional ballistic missile production is arguably one of the most important metrics for the ongoing war in Ukraine and European defense more broadly. With fewer ballistic missile defense interceptors reaching Ukraine, and a shrinking share available on the global market as a result of the Iran War, the ability to manufacture and deploy ballistic missiles at scale remains a major source of coercive leverage for Russia.

This post examines claimed Russian ballistic missile production rates — focusing on the 9M723 Iskander-M and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal — and compares them with use rates to assess the current state of Russian ballistic missile production capacity.

Ukrainian assessments and Russian ballistic missile employment rates

Throughout the war, Ukrainian intelligence has relatively openly shared its assessments of Russian ballistic missile production, specifically regarding the 9M723 short-range ballistic missile used in the Iskander-M system and the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile.

Ukrainian intelligence is, of course, not a neutral source, and it is arguably in Ukraine’s interest to exaggerate production numbers to create urgency and expedite interceptor deliveries, even if actual figures are somewhat lower. That said, in the absence of alternatives, it remains one of the more authoritative sources on the subject.

In July 2024, HUR data, as reported by the Kyiv Independent, indicated that Russia was producing 720 to 840 9M723 ballistic missiles and 120 to 180 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles annually. It is unclear whether these figures represented a notional production ceiling or Ukrainian intelligence’s estimate of actual output. In either case, they appear to have been exaggerated.

Procurement documents that have emerged since suggest that Russia ordered 598 and 643 9M723 missiles for production in 2024 and 2025, respectively. Order intake for the Kh-47M2 remains undisclosed. These figures are likely closer to the real production ceiling than those reported by Ukrainian intelligence, though actual output in both years was probably lower.

The CSIS Russian Firepower Strike Tracker aggregates data on Russian missile and long-range drone use based on Ukrainian Air Force reporting and provides analysis of the frequency and intensity of Russian strike activity. These aggregate figures should be treated with caution, as some strikes go unreported or are recorded inaccurately. They are also poorly suited to precise assessments of individual missile types, since Ukrainian source data often fails to neatly differentiate among missile types and instead aggregates them (for example, reporting 9M723 and KN-23 ballistic missile numbers together). As a rough estimate of magnitude, however, they can be useful.

Accounting for these shortcomings, it is reasonable to estimate that Russia launched no more than 200 to 250 9M723 ballistic missiles and 50 to 70 Kh-47M2 ballistic missiles against Ukraine in 2024. For 2025, the figures indicate a significant increase, suggesting a production surge, but likely still amounted to no more than 350 to 400 9M723 ballistic missiles and 75 to 100 Kh-47M2 ballistic missiles.

There is, of course, the possibility that a substantial share of missiles produced in 2024 and 2025 went into longer-term storage. However, before Russia stopped reporting serial numbers on missile components some time in 2023, recovered missile wrecks indicated a very short lag between production and use, suggesting that Russia tends to launch what it builds fairly quickly. This is unlikely to have changed in the years after. While Russia is reported to maintain a reserve stockpile for broader contingencies, it is unlikely to be large enough to account for the gap between ordered and launched quantities.

Russian ballistic missile production in 2024 and 2025 was therefore likely below ordered quantities and well below the production capacity estimated by Ukrainian intelligence.

Russian ballistic missile employment rates and production capacity in 2026

How has the picture since developed? Ukrainian Air Force data suggest that from 2025 through early 2026, the intensity of Russian ballistic missile employment increased, indicating higher production capacity. Analysts at Militarnyi plotted this in the graph below.

Figure: Dmytro Shumlyanskyi, Militarnyi

Since May 2025, reported ballistic missile strikes have exceeded 40 per month, with two exceptions: September and December 2025, when reported figures fell below 30 and 40, respectively, before rebounding substantially in subsequent months, suggesting that the lower employment rate in those months may reflect deliberate stockpiling.

Again, these trends should not be overinterpreted given the unreliability of the underlying data. In general, however, employment rates appear to have fluctuated more significantly in recent months, reaching higher peaks while also more clearly dipping below the trendline at other times.

Analysts at Militarnyi went a step further, fitting a cubic regression trend line to smoothed time-series data, which to them indicates that Russian ballistic missile employment in March and April 2026 dipped below the trend. They attribute this to recent strikes against the Russian ballistic missile production supply chain.

Figure: Dmytro Shumlyanskyi, Militarnyi

These claims are theoretically plausible but warrant caution for statistical reasons. The cubic trend is fitted to approximately 15 smoothed observations, which themselves constitute partially constructed data, leaving little room to distinguish a real pattern from random noise. The standard error of 5.72 missiles means the observed dip falls comfortably within the model’s normal prediction interval, rendering it statistically inconclusive.

Data from May 2026 suggests that Russian ballistic missile employment has recovered to previous levels, with roughly 60 to 80 9M723 and Kh-47M2 missiles launched against Ukraine, depending on how many ballistic projectiles constituted repurposed S-300/400 surface-to-air missiles, a distinction the source data does not clearly draw. This suggests that the dip in the preceding two months may be partly explained by stockpiling ahead of May, and that any supply chain disruptions suffered in recent months have at least partially been overcome (even if they could have prevented an increase in production capacity over that timeframe).

Where does this leave Russian ballistic missile production capacity by mid-2026? Recently, Ukrainian intelligence provided an updated estimate of Russian missile production capacity, stating that Russia produces around 60 9M723 ballistic missiles per month. Numbers for the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal remained unspecified.

Based on recent employment trends, this figure is not entirely implausible (at least compared to when this number was first mentioned in 2024), though it should be treated as an upper-bound estimate. More realistically, Russia’s combined 9M723 and Kh-47M2 production capacity in mid-2026 may be between 600 and 800 units annually, with monthly production potentially fluctuating significantly depending on the availability of internationally sourced components. This would allow Russia to sustain an average employment rate of roughly 50 to 70 monthly ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine, with greater peaks possible if part of the production is stockpiled in a given month.

Conclusion

This analysis presents a challenging picture for Ukraine and, more broadly, Europe. Employment rates of this magnitude appear more than sufficient to saturate and likely overwhelm Ukraine’s already depleted ballistic missile defenses.

To maintain a sustainable denial posture, Ukraine would likely need access to at least 140 PAC-3 MSE-type interceptors per month, valued at roughly USD 1 billion on the international market, according to relatively recent budget requests. Even if such volumes could be imported, which is nowhere near realistic, Ukraine lacks sufficient ballistic missile defense launchers to cover its entire territory.

Promises to deploy a European Patriot alternative as early as next year, such as those made by FirePoint, are not realistic, even if such an effort must be pursued. Ukraine’s best course of action in the short-term is to continue targeting the Russian ballistic missile production supply chain through its increasingly capable long-range arsenal. Electronic warfare efforts aimed at degrading the accuracy of Russian ballistic missiles could reduce their impact, even if they cannot stop them outright.

Western states must reinforce sanctions and tighten third-party measures to ensure that advanced Western components do not reach Russian ballistic missiles, or, where this cannot be fully prevented, that doing so carries the highest possible cost and effort for Russia.

Picture: Anduril / Screenshot from video

On 13 May, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the signing of framework agreements with five American missile manufacturers for the potential production and delivery of over 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles and 12,000 aeroballistic missile systems capable of maneuvering at hypersonic speeds.

The programs established through these agreements are the latest step in the United States' accelerating effort to build missile production capacity across the full spectrum of long-range strike systems. This post examines the individual capabilities covered by the agreements and situates them within the broader U.S. missile industrial ramp-up.

Low-cost containerized missile program

Four American companies have been selected to potentially deliver over 10,000 mini cruise missiles between 2027 and 2029 under the Low-Cost Containerized Missile program. These are Anduril’s SLB-500M, CoAspire’s GHOST, and as yet unconfirmed systems from Leidos and Zone 5 Technologies. Production contracts will be awarded following an evaluation and assessment phase scheduled to begin in June 2026.

Anduril’s SLB-500M has a range exceeding 930 kilometers and carries a relatively light 45-kilogram payload. The air-launched version, the Barracuda-500M, has recently been designated AGM-189A. The designation of the ground-launched variant included in the program is not yet known.

GHOST is the ground-launched variant of CoAspire’s RAACM-ER, itself an extended-range variant of the RAACM, which emerged from the U.S. Air Force’s ERAM program, conceived to meet the urgent need for a low-cost standoff weapon for allied air forces. According to the manufacturer, the air-launched RAACM-ER has a range exceeding 1,800 kilometers. Whether GHOST retains that range in ground-launched configuration is unclear, though a range well above 1,000 kilometers appears plausible. Payload capacity has not been disclosed, but is likely comparable to that of the SLB-500M.

Less is known about Zone 5 Technologies’ offering, though it is very likely based on the Rusty Dagger, an air-launched mini cruise missile that recently received the designation AGM-188A. Like the RAACM, it was initially offered under the ERAM program. It is unclear whether Zone 5 will adapt the missile for ground-launch or continue to focus on air-launch capability — for example, by offering a palletized container launcher compatible with transport aircraft such as the C-130 and C-17. The Rusty Dagger’s range is known to exceed 450 kilometers, potentially by a significant margin. Payload capacity is unknown but likely comparable to the SLB-500M and GHOST.

The Leidos system is the least documented of the four. It is a ground-launched system with no confirmed designation, and Leidos has not publicly released range and payload specifications. The system will leverage technologies from the company’s AGM-190A Black Arrow, an air-launched mini cruise missile weighing only 91 kilograms with a demonstrated range of at least 740 kilometers. The variant included in the LCCM program will be twice the size of the Black Arrow, meaning it could plausibly retain or even exceed that range in ground-launch configuration. Payload capacity will likely remain limited and below that of the other three systems.

None of the four missiles relies on a particularly sophisticated guidance suite. All use GPS/INS as their primary midcourse guidance mode. The Rusty Dagger and SLB-500M are confirmed to feature some form of image-based visual navigation to supplement GPS/INS in denied environments, though similar capability appears plausible for the other two systems, which would also provide a terminal guidance function and improve accuracy.

Low-cost hypersonic missile program

The May 2026 framework agreement also covers the procurement of the Blackbeard missile from Castelion, a defense startup founded in 2022 (not to be confused with the above-mentioned Black Arrow from Leidos). The Blackbeard is an aeroballistic missile designed to operate at speeds exceeding Mach 5 while retaining atmospheric maneuverability. According to the manufacturer, it is intended for engagement of time-sensitive and hardened targets.

Castelion has been working on both a ground-launched variant, the Blackbeard-GL, and an air-launched variant. The U.S. Navy has separately selected the air-launched variant under its MACE program, awarding Castelion a $105 million contract to integrate it with the F/A-18E/F, with early operational capability targeted for 2027. It remains unclear whether the May 2026 framework agreement covers the air-launched or ground-launched variant, or whether it is related to the MACE program or entirely independent of it (shoutout to Colby Badhwar for clarifying this).

Specific range and payload figures remain undisclosed. The U.S. Army describes the Blackbeard-GL as delivering 80 percent of the capability of the Precision Strike Missile Increment 4, which could imply a range of around 800 kilometers (if referring to PrSM Inc. 4’s ~1,000 km range, though it could similarly refer to payload capacity or other specifications). The MACE program included a payload requirement of at least 75 pounds (34 kilograms), indicating a relatively small warhead. The hard-target kill capability specified by the manufacturer may therefore be achieved by maintaining a very high terminal velocity.

The U.S. Navy has indicated a target unit cost of approximately $300,000 for the air-launched variant, with joint Army and Navy procurement expected to generate economies of scale. The framework agreement establishes a guaranteed minimum of 500 missiles per year for two years once testing and validation are complete, with a pathway to procure over 12,000 missiles across five years, subject to funding allocation.

U.S. missile production ramp-up: context and scale

The May 2026 framework agreements represent the latest step in an ongoing, accelerating effort to expand U.S. missile production capacity across the full spectrum of long-range strike systems. Operational experience in Ukraine and Iran has demonstrated that modern high-intensity conflict consumes precision munitions at rates that existing Western industrial capacity cannot sustain — a lesson the United States has moved aggressively to address in preparation for a potential confrontation with China.

At the high end, scheduled JASSM-ER production for 2026 stands at approximately 396 units, though the production line can reportedly surge to around 860 if fully dedicated to the JASSM-ER. Production is being scaled toward 1,100 units per year, constrained primarily by turbofan engine supply and shared infrastructure with the LRASM anti-ship cruise missile. Raytheon is targeting an increase in Tomahawk production to over 1,000 units annually under framework agreements signed in February 2026. The Precision-Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 1 is ramping from a baseline of 152 units per year (the number planned to buy in 2026) toward its established full-rate production target of 400 annually, with a new seven-year framework contract paving the way to quadruple those numbers.

At the lower end of the spectrum, Operation Epic Fury saw the first operational deployment of LUCAS, a low-cost one-way attack drone similar to the Iranian Shahed-136 or Russian Geran-2. Near-term output is likely to scale to the hundreds per year, with thousands feasible subject to funding.

The low-cost cruise missile and Blackbeard programs fill the middle of this spectrum — above expendable drones in range, payload, and speed, but well below the unit cost of JASSM-ER or Tomahawk — completing a layered strike architecture designed to generate volume, overwhelm enemy air defenses, and sustain high-tempo operations without exhausting missile inventories.

Conclusion

On 28 December 2025, in my final post of that year, I concluded that “several European states are likely to pursue a mini cruise missile capability in 2026.” This assumption rested on the unmistakable utility of affordable cruise missile systems and unused industrial production capacity in this sector. It is the United States, not Europe, that has pulled the trigger first, establishing large-scale procurement frameworks for mini cruise missiles alongside low-cost aeroballistic missiles.

It is also worth emphasizing that the current U.S. ramp-up is being implemented in a peacetime setting. In wartime, U.S. industry could feasibly produce thousands of high- and low-end missiles per month, potentially alongside tens of thousands of long-range drones. Reliable figures on Chinese missile production are notoriously difficult to obtain. Still, if fully implemented, the current effort should, at a minimum, put the United States on a competitive footing with China in the long-range strike domain.

Picture: U.S. Navy

The announcement that the United States will not deploy a Long-Range Fires Battalion has sent shockwaves through European capitals — more so than it should have — once again highlighting the dramatic capability gap Europe faces in the deep-precision-strike segment.

European long-range and deep-strike arsenals are insufficient. Efforts to refill them have been slow, with credible rearmament timelines stretching into the 2030s. This need not be a foregone conclusion, however. European states retain three credible pathways toward rapid rearmament in the deep-strike domain:

1. Acquisition of Ukrainian systems

2. Acquisition of market-available non-Ukrainian solutions

3. Accelerating development programs into crash efforts

This post reviews each alternative.

Pathway 1: Acquisition of Ukrainian Systems

Ukraine has, over the past four years, developed a large and diverse long-range and deep-strike arsenal comprising long-range drones, mini cruise missiles, and heavy cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles are under development.

If European states prioritize strike range and wish to quickly field a capability with a range broadly comparable to the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile (1,600 kilometers), Ukrainian long-range drone manufacturers might be the only viable near-term alternative. The latter have previously indicated that they have excess capacity to fill European orders, which would also help generate additional capacity to supply the Ukrainian armed forces. A significant European order would put that proposition to the test.

Likely candidates include FirePoint’s FP-1 and Antonov’s An-196 Liutyi, which, depending on the variant, have demonstrated ranges exceeding 1,500 kilometers and payload capacities of up to 120 kilograms. That payload is substantially smaller than what a Tomahawk or comparable system offers (454 kilograms), and European states would have to accept compromises on survivability, lethality, and velocity. If the ability to strike Moscow and beyond is the primary requirement, however, these are battle-tested systems that could likely be exported on short notice and at relatively low unit cost, possibly in the medium to high five figures depending on contract size.

Other Ukrainian systems warrant consideration. Mini cruise missiles such as the Bars, Peklo, and Palianytsia are viable options that, while somewhat more expensive than long-range drone alternatives, offer higher velocity and survivability, though at the expense of range — indicated at 500 to 800 kilometers for these systems.

In principle, European states could also seek to join existing heavy missile programs such as FirePoint’s Flamingo heavy land-attack cruise missile, or the planned FP-7 and FP-9 ballistic missile capabilities. Unlike the lighter systems described above, however, these are not mature programs. Procurement would therefore carry greater risk and likely involve extended delivery timelines.

Pathway 2: Acquisition of Off-the-Shelf Systems

If European states prefer not to procure from Ukraine, other options are available. Some are American. Several European states have already procured the Tomahawk and AGM-158B JASSM-ER. Even with America’s comparatively large production capacity, however, lead times have lengthened considerably. Finland, the Netherlands, and Poland, for example, will wait until 2032 for JASSM-ER orders placed by 2024 to be fulfilled, and delays caused by the Iran War could stretch those timelines further. Ordering from the United States is also an increasingly unattractive option politically and may be rejected on those grounds.

South Korea and Israel may also be options, though capacity limitations similarly constrain their ability to deliver quickly. South Korean manufacturers, in particular, have recently signed a number of export contracts for the Chunmoo MLRS system, thereby reducing excess capacity. The 500-kilometer-plus missile for Chunmoo is also still under development and will likely not be available before the 2030s.

The alternative is European industry. While the heavy cruise missiles that European states have traditionally procured carry long lead times, there is potential for European manufacturers to supply meaningful quantities of lighter cruise missiles and long-range drones more quickly.

Destinus, a European missile manufacturer headquartered in the Netherlands, could supply the Ruta mini cruise missile. The Ruta Block 1, extensively battle-tested in Ukraine, is equipped with a turbojet engine, has a range exceeding 300 kilometers, and carries a 150-kilogram payload. The recently announced Ruta Block 2, which has recently undergone flight testing, extends the range to over 800 kilometers and could be a logical choice for European procurement.

Destinus already produces around 2,000 Ruta mini cruise missiles annually, with production scalable significantly upon order. This is in part enabled by the establishment of additional production sites across Europe, including through a joint venture with Rheinmetall in Germany. Lead time for new orders is indicated as 6 months.

European missile prime MBDA also offers several systems. Beyond the SCALP-EG, currently produced at an estimated 100 missiles per year, MBDA has received a development and low-rate production contract for the One-Way Effector, a 500-kilometer long-range drone, with initial deliveries planned for mid-2027. With sufficient urgency and additional funding, it may be possible to accelerate the timeline and reach full-scale production of 1,000 units per month rather quickly. MBDA also states that its Crossbow mini cruise missile is ready for serial production pending an order.

None of these systems is comparable to American missile systems that would have arrived as part of the Long-Range Fires Battalion. However, if European states are willing to relax range and payload requirements, accept larger quantities of less capable systems, and tolerate some risk associated with betting on new suppliers and supply chains, European solutions for rapid acquisition exist.

Pathway 3: Acquisition through crash programs

If European states do not wish to rely on Ukrainian suppliers while also insisting on a heavy missile capability comparable to American systems that are no longer arriving, the only feasible near-term solution is to convert existing longer-term development projects into crash programs for rapid procurement.

The Land Cruise Missile program — the envisioned ground-launched version of the Missile de Croisière Navale and the most direct European analog to the Tomahawk — may be the most feasible candidate.

Under a crash program, states participating in the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA) could quickly agree on core design parameters, commit to a fixed procurement quantity, and provide the funding necessary to accelerate the timeline. Success would likely depend on the willingness of procuring states to set aside disagreements over where development and production are localized and to direct funding to whichever national players can deliver results most quickly, in this case, French industry. Even then, delivery of the Land Cruise Missile to European militaries appears unlikely before 2028.

Another potential candidate for a crash program is the deep-strike capability envisioned under the British-German bilateral project, which could aim at pushing the deployment timeline from the 2030s to the late 2020s. That said, feasibility constraints are likely to impose tighter limits on rapid delivery here than for the Land Cruise Missile.

Beggars can’t be choosers

In the end, European states face a limited set of options, but are by no means out of them. What is clear, however, is that — given European hesitation to invest in deep strike over the past several years — no optimal solution remains, and European states will have to accept trade-offs in weapon characteristics and procurement risk if they want to field at least an adequate long-range strike capability by the end of the decade.

If European states pursue none of the three options outlined above, a credible European long-range and especially a deep-strike capability is unlikely to materialize before the mid-2030s. This would be a dangerous gamble, given the critical role these weapon systems play in modern warfare and the fact that European officials themselves have repeatedly identified the late 2020s as the period of greatest danger.

Podcast announcement

In case you haven’t seen it yet, my friends and I have started a new weekly podcast called “Mildly Alarmed”, where we discuss all things European security and defense.

The second episode, which takes a closer look at the challenges facing Europe, went online a few days ago.

You can listen via Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. I would greatly appreciate it if you supported us over there!

Picture: Mil.ru via Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the war in Ukraine, reports have periodically emerged suggesting that Ukrainian electronic warfare systems have successfully jammed Russian ballistic missiles, causing them to miss their intended targets.

Most recently, the Kyiv Independent reported that one electronic warfare project claimed to have downed 58 out of 59 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles. “Downed” is somewhat of a misnomer here, but likely refers to an electronic warfare system degrading the missiles’ navigation sufficiently to render them militarily ineffective.

This post discusses what an electronic warfare system designed to defeat incoming ballistic missiles might look like, the technical and operational challenges of deploying such a system, and the implications for the ongoing war.

The electronic warfare vulnerability of ballistic missiles

Conventional short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, including those used by Russia against Ukraine, typically rely on a guidance architecture combining an inertial measurement unit (IMU) with a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver.

The IMU is a self-contained navigation system that tracks the missile’s movement and orientation from launch to calculate its position throughout flight. Its primary advantage is that it requires no external signals, making it immune to outside interference and undetectable by an adversary. Its primary limitation is integration drift: small measurement errors that accumulate over time, producing progressively larger position errors that degrade accuracy.

For example, it is estimated that at a 300 kilometers range, the 9M720 short-range ballistic missile — the export version of the 9M723 employed in the Iskander-M system that Russia uses itself — relying entirely on its inertial measurement unit, achieves a circular error probable (the smallest radius within 50 percent of launched projectiles are expected to fall) of up to 200 meters.

To address integration drift and maintain higher accuracy over long distances, ballistic missiles — like other types of long-range strike weapons — rely on GNSS corrections, which periodically update the IMU with satellite-derived position fixes. Combining the two systems can substantially reduce the missile’s circular error probable. Modern conventional short-range ballistic missiles can credibly strike within 5 to 10 meters of their intended target, with even smaller deviations feasible in high-end systems.

Jamming ballistic missiles

Electronic warfare can exploit the dependency of ballistic missiles on GNSS for high accuracy. Russia relies on its GLONASS satellite constellation for position fixes of its missile systems. Like GPS, GLONASS transmits on two frequency bands simultaneously — L1 (centered around 1602 MHz) and L2 (centered around 1246 MHz) — which allows receivers to correct for ionospheric signal delays and improve positioning accuracy.

This dual-band design defines the jammer's task. By broadcasting noise across both frequency bands simultaneously, a ground-based jammer can overpower the GLONASS signal at the missile's receiver, leaving the navigation system unable to distinguish satellite signals from interference. At that point, the navigation system is forced to fall back on inertial guidance for the remainder of the flight, or until the satellite signal is reestablished. Given integration drift, this progressively degrades accuracy the longer the missile flies without a GNSS-enabled position fix.

The satellite signal reaching a ballistic missile is generally weak. GPS and GLONASS signals arrive at roughly -130 dBm at the Earth’s surface. They are somewhat stronger at altitude due to reduced atmospheric attenuation, but the jammer enjoys a significant power advantage by operating far closer to the missile than the orbiting satellites.

The 9M723 short-range ballistic missile, for example, typically reaches an altitude of 50 to 60 kilometers during a standard midcourse trajectory, and up to 100 kilometers on a lofted trajectory. By contrast, the GLONASS constellation operates at an altitude of 19,140 kilometers. High-power ground-based jammers of the kind already deployed by Ukraine and Russia, positioned within a few hundred kilometers of the missile’s trajectory, can, in principle, achieve the jamming-to-signal ratios necessary to overwhelm the receiver and deny satellite correction.

That said, jamming effectiveness also depends on several other factors, notably whether the missile's GNSS antenna incorporates anti-jamming measures such as null-steering — which suppresses signals arriving from the direction of the jammer while maintaining reception from satellites above — and how the antenna is oriented relative to the jammer at any given point in flight.

Technical and operational considerations

Several technical and operational conditions must likely align for the jamming operation against incoming Russian ballistic missiles to have a reasonable chance of success.

First, the jammer must achieve line-of-sight to the missile at high elevation angles. Conventional ground-based jamming antennas are optimized for near-horizontal emission geometries — typically designed to jam relatively low-altitude aerial vehicles — and perform poorly against targets at steep elevation angles, where ballistic missiles spend their midcourse phase. Effective GNSS jamming of ballistic missiles therefore requires a phased-array antenna capable of electronically steering its output toward high-elevation angles, or, alternatively, a high-altitude platform such as an aircraft or UAV, though I consider the latter is less likely in the Ukrainian context.

Second, the jammer must be active and within effective range before the missile completes its midcourse phase. The 9M723 and Kh-47M2 Kinzhal travel at high subsonic to low hypersonic velocities during midcourse, resulting in flight times of only a few minutes. The window during which satellite correction is most critical is a subset of that, placing stringent demands on effective early warning and requiring the jammer to be in position before the missile is launched. Relocation after launch is not an option.

Third, jamming must be sustained long enough to prevent meaningful position correction. A brief interruption in the GNSS signal matters little if the missile reacquires the signal in time to offset the degradation before impact. The jamming operation must therefore cover enough of the midcourse phase for inertial drift to accumulate beyond the missile’s ability to compensate in the later phases of the flight.

Fourth, creating the interfering signals needed to jam a hardened military-grade GNSS receiver puts a strong demand on hardware and supporting infrastructure, requiring a high-power transmitter, a dedicated radar-tracking system to maintain a focused beam on a fast-moving target, substantial power-generation equipment, and a sizable antenna array. Together, these components produce a substantial physical and electronic footprint, which can render the system vulnerable to counterattacks.

Implications for the war

As the war in the Middle East has accelerated the global ballistic missile interceptor shortage, further straining Ukraine’s ability to maintain an effective ballistic missile defense, an electronic warfare system capable of complementing that defense architecture could hardly be more timely.

Whether Ukraine has fielded such a system remains unclear from open sources. As outlined above, however, it appears at least feasible, even if doing so entails significant technical and operational challenges. It is also worth noting, if somewhat speculatively, that more effective enforcement of Western sanctions could have aided Ukrainian jamming operations.

It is well established that, despite significant import substitution efforts, Russia has failed to effectively replace advanced Western components in its long-range strike weapons, including their guidance systems, which continue to rely heavily on Western electronics typically imported through third countries. If sanctions enforcement has tightened, further curtailing Western supply and forcing Russia to resort to domestic or lower-quality foreign components, Russian IMUs could become progressively less accurate, while GNSS receivers may grow more vulnerable to Ukrainian jamming. In theory, this could greatly enhance the chances of success for Ukrainian electronic warfare efforts.

Podcast announcement

In case you haven’t seen it yet, my friends and I have started a new weekly podcast called “Mildly Alarmed”, where we discuss European security and defense.

The first episode, discussing the state of the war in Ukraine, went online a few days ago.

You can listen via Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. I would greatly appreciate it if you supported us over there!

Dear Missile Matters readers,

My friends and I just launched Mildly Alarmed, a new podcast on European security and defense, and I would love for you to join us.

The podcast features:

• Anastasiia Lapatina: Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare and author of the Yours Ukrainian Substack, based in Kyiv;

• Karen-Anna Eggen: Senior Researcher and Head of the Program for Ukraine and Full-Spectrum Threats at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, based in Oslo;

• Minna Ålander: Analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, and Non-Resident Fellow at CEPA. Minna also writes the Northern Flank Notes Substack and is based in Stockholm;

• and yours truly (Fabian Hoffmann): Senior Researcher at the Program for Ukraine and Full-Spectrum Threats at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies and Non-Resident Fellow at CEPA. I am the author of the Missile Matters Substack, and I am based in Oslo.

Every week, we discuss issues relevant to European security and defense. The first three episodes form a mini-series: the first covers the state of the war in Ukraine, the second European security and defense, and the third the broader global security environment.

The first episode, “Is Ukraine Winning the War,” is now online. With conditions on the ground looking somewhat more favorable for Ukraine after a difficult winter, we discuss whether Ukraine is on a trajectory toward victory and what, if anything, the ongoing peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have produced.

You can access the episode via Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts.

I would be honored if you decide to follow along. Fair warning: we are still getting to grips with our equipment, so sound quality will improve as we go.

All the best,

Fabian

Picture: Office of the President of Ukraine

The salience of missiles and drones in the war in Ukraine and other recent conflicts has brought these systems from expert discourse into the popular domain. One consequence is that there is little conceptual clarity about what distinguishes a missile from a drone — and how different missile types relate to one another. This post attempts to clarify the matter by offering a primer on missile classification.

Missile projectiles

The term “missile” is by no means a modern invention. Its earliest known English use dates to 1606, describing a projectile thrown or hurled at an adversary, and historians have long applied it retroactively to ancient and medieval ranged weapons, including slings, javelins, and arrows.

The NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions defines a missile as “a self-propelled munition whose trajectory or course is controlled while in flight.” Two elements matter here. A missile is self-propelled, whether continuously or only during part of its flight, and it must follow a guided, non-random trajectory. Continuous guidance is not required.

This definition is broad by design, and that breadth is consequential. It means that what is commonly described today as a “long-range one-way attack drone” fits squarely within the missile category: a self-propelled vehicle that delivers a warhead to a target in a guided manner. The label “drone” adds nothing definitionally that “missile” does not already capture in this context.

The recent tendency to recategorize established missile types — cruise missiles chief among them — as drones gets the relationship exactly backward. “Missile” is the macro category, with deep historical and institutional roots. The long-range drone emerged as a common tool of warfare decades after that category and its definitions were firmly established. Reclassifying what are, by any known definition, missiles as drones reflects imprecise usage hardening into convention. This is a pattern worth resisting before it distorts analysis and policy-making alike, for example, for the purposes of export control regimes.

Types of missile systems

As such, long-range drones such as the Shahed-136 and Geran-2 are essentially missiles, but they differ meaningfully from what we have traditionally understood as cruise missiles. Clarifying those differences requires a brief taxonomy of missile systems.

Missiles broadly divide into two propulsion-based categories: air-breathing and non-air-breathing designs. Non-air-breathing missiles include ballistic and quasi-ballistic missiles, rocket artillery, hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, most air-to-air missiles, and some air-to-ground missiles, such as rocket-propelled anti-radiation missiles. The propulsion unit used in these missile systems carries its own oxidizer on board and, hence, functions independently of the surrounding air. In contrast, air-breathing missiles rely on the surrounding air as oxidizer and must remain within the atmosphere throughout their flight. Within this latter category sit both cruise missiles and long-range drones, which differ in degree rather than kind.

Cruise missiles are engineered for greater lethality and survivability: they integrate advanced midcourse and terminal guidance seekers, carry heavier, more sophisticated payloads, and use engines optimized for high subsonic to supersonic velocities. Long-range attack drones trade capability for cost. Simpler propulsion, less sophisticated guidance, and smaller payloads considerably reduce individual lethality and survivability, but the resulting expendability and mass-producability make them well-suited to saturation attacks. Slower drone velocity also necessitates more aerodynamic surface area, leading to a wider, less sleek design associated with cruise missiles.

That said, the boundary between a high-end long-range drone and a low-end cruise missile is genuinely blurry. Adding a turbojet engine, integrating a terminal guidance seeker, and increasing payload capacity — all steps Russia has taken with some of its long-range drone variants — progressively shifts the capability profile toward that of a cruise missile.

There are, nonetheless, good reasons to maintain the distinction between cruise missiles and long-range drones as separate design categories. If one still insists on collapsing them into a single category, however, the taxonomically coherent move would be to treat long-range drones as a type of low-cost cruise missile rather than to treat cruise missiles as high-end drones. The cruise missile category predates the long-range drone by decades and carries well-established definitional weight.

Missile-drones?

Over the past two years, Ukrainian analysts and observers have added another layer of confusion by describing certain weapon systems as “missile-drones” — the Palianytsia and Peklo being the most prominent examples.

But that label isn’t helpful. Both systems use turbojet engines, achieve velocities above those typical of long-range drones, carry comparatively larger payloads (at least in the Ukrainian context), and feature an optical design that more closely resembles that of a cruise missile rather than a drone. Their mission profiles follow suit. These are mini cruise missiles, and should be described as such.

Of course, I don’t think it is useful to get too caught up in these types of taxonomic debates. That said, as missiles are talked about by an increasingly large audience, maintaining linguistic precision in missile terminology is both helpful and arguably necessary. I hope this post has provided some guidance in this regard. If — for whatever reason — missile definitions actually excite you, I have written a much more comprehensive discussion of this topic for an EU-funded learning unit on missiles. You can access it here.

Picture: MBDA

As European states advance their rearmament efforts in the long-range strike domain, France stands out for the sheer number of ongoing national-level development programs, setting it apart from other European states that — for better or worse — have chosen to rely on American technology to fill urgent capability gaps.

This post reviews France’s ongoing long-range and deep strike programs across four capability areas: rocket artillery, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and affordable one-way effectors.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the breadth of these efforts raises questions about financial and industrial feasibility. That said, France’s recent, somewhat decisive embrace of affordable long-range strike solutions could position it as a European leader in this capability area.

French long-range and deep-strike programs

In total, French manufacturers are developing 13 distinct long-range and deep-strike systems, summarized in the table below and explored in greater detail in the following section.

Rocket artillery

As part of the FLP-T program, French manufacturers are currently developing two competing designs for a 150-kilometer guided artillery rocket, conceptually similar to the American GMLRS-ER fired from HIMARS.

MBDA and Safran are offering the Thundart, while ArianeGroup and Thales are jointly offering the FLP-T 150 (likely a placeholder name). The program seeks to procure at least 13 French MLRS systems by 2030, implying that the winning design will reach initial operational capability in the early 2030s.

While there appears to be an appetite for a French rocket artillery missile in the 150–300 kilometer range, comparable to the American M57 ATACMS or the South Korean CTM-290, no such system is currently planned under the program. The FLP-T, however, envisions a 500-kilometer-plus long-range strike capability, discussed in the next section.

Land-attack cruise missiles

France currently has three ongoing land-attack cruise missile programs.

The first is SCALP-EG Mk. 2, which, as the name suggests, is an evolution of the existing SCALP-EG air-launched cruise missile, likely incorporating improved guidance, target acquisition, and mission planning functions while broadly retaining the original airframe and preserving interoperability with the current fleet. The Mk. 2 is primarily intended as a life-extension measure, bridging the gap until France’s next-generation air-launched cruise missile enters service in the early 2030s.

That next-generation system is the STRATUS LO, developed under what was previously known as the Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon program run jointly with the UK and Italy. STRATUS LO is one of two variants being advanced under the program, the other being STRATUS RS. STRATUS LO is a subsonic, low-observable land-attack cruise missile; STRATUS RS is a supersonic land-attack cruise missile with a targeted top speed of Mach 3 to Mach 5.

For France, STRATUS LO will primarily replace the SCALP-EG. While STRATUS RS will serve a general multirole function, it is also intended to provide more specialized SEAD/DEAD and time-sensitive targeting capabilities for the Rafale F5 fleet. STRATUS LO targets an initial operational capability of around 2032; STRATUS RS will likely not become operational before 2035.

Finally, MBDA is developing the Land Cruise Missile, a ground-launched land-attack cruise missile adapted from the Missile de Croisière Navale — France’s ship- and submarine-launched land-attack cruise missile, which reached initial operational capability in 2017. First test firings are planned for 2027–2028. The Land Cruise Missile is envisioned to fill the 500-kilometer-plus range envelope within the FLP-T program, with a likely range exceeding 1,000 kilometers and a potential initial operational capability in the early 2030s.

Ballistic missiles

The Missile Balistique Terrestre (MBT) program, led by ArianeGroup, represents France’s return to conventional ballistic missile capability after a thirty-year gap.

Two variants were unveiled as mock-ups at the Paris Air Show in June 2025. The first is a single-stage solid-propellant ballistic missile with a baseline range exceeding 1,000 kilometers, truck-launched from a standard transporter-erector-launcher. The second is a two-stage variant extending the range to 2,000 kilometers or beyond. Both draw heavily on ArianeGroup’s expertise in solid-rocket motors developed for the M51 submarine-launched ballistic missile and the Ariane launcher family.

The program was formally funded in the 2026 budget at an initial €15.6 million for feasibility work, scaling to roughly €900 million in total through 2030. A realistic initial operational capability for the single-stage variant is the early to mid-2030s; the two-stage variant is likely further out.

The two-stage variant may eventually incorporate a hypersonic glide vehicle, building on the V-MAX demonstrator program, successfully tested in June 2023 using an American-supplied sounding rocket. V-MAX2, the follow-on hypersonic glide vehicle demonstrator, is closer in design to the eventual operational system and was originally scheduled for testing in 2025, but was delayed after France decided to move away from reliance on American booster technology.

France is now awaiting the completion of the SyLEx two-stage sounding rocket, also supplied by ArianeGroup, which is needed to bring the projectile to altitude before resuming hypersonic glide vehicle testing. The sounding rocket is not scheduled to fly before 2027, pushing hypersonic-related testing likely into the late 2020s and eventual deployment well into the 2030s.

Low-cost long-range strike systems

Lastly, France is working on three separate long-range and deep-strike programs focused on creating affordable mass.

The first is the MBDA One-Way Effector (OWE), a jet-powered long-range strike drone with a range of 500 kilometers and a 40-kilogram warhead. The French armaments agency (DGA) placed a confirmed development and production order in January 2026, with initial deliveries to the French armed forces planned for mid-2027. MBDA claims a production surge capacity of up to 1,000 units per month through partnerships with automotive industry manufacturers. The initial contracted quantity has not been disclosed, but it likely amounts to several hundred.

The second is MBDA’s Crossbow, a heavier one-way effector carrying a 300-kilogram warhead over a range of 800 kilometers, sharing similarities with the mini cruise missile designs popularized by Ukraine, and pursued by several other manufacturers. No production contract has been confirmed.

The third is Chorus, developed by Turgis & Gaillard in partnership with carmaker Renault, which envisions a deep strike system carrying a 500-kilogram warhead over 3,000 kilometers at approximately 400 kilometers per hour. The system has commonly been described as a drone, though it appears to share more similarities with a low-cost heavy cruise missile design, similar to the Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo. The DGA has awarded a €35 million validation contract, with around ten drones to be delivered for evaluation by summer 2026. If trials succeed, a ten-year framework contract worth approximately €1 billion could follow.

France is also a signatory to the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA) OWE 500+ Letter of Intent, signed in February 2026 by six European nations, which envisions a jointly developed one-way effector with a range exceeding 500 kilometers and a unit cost below €100,000. The program is in its feasibility phase and has not yet produced a development contract. MBDA’s OWE could serve as an industrial baseline for a multilateral European long-range strike effort, though it remains to be seen whether the ELSA program converges on this design or another.

Outlook and challenges

France’s long-range and deep-strike portfolio is, on paper, the most ambitious in Europe. Across all capability tiers, the French industry is developing or has recently contracted more distinct long-range strike systems than any other European state.

The binding constraints will be financial capacity and industrial bandwidth. MBDA and ArianeGroup are simultaneously running development programs across nearly every conventional long-range strike category reviewed above, while sustaining existing systems and executing nuclear modernization commitments — ASMPA-R, ASN4G, and M51.4 — that absorb significant engineering capacity.

Timeline risk is also apparent. Several programs are already running late, and sequential dependencies mean that a slip in any one program could propagate through the others. The FLP-T capability gap — the window between the retirement of the current MLRS force and the delivery of FLP-T systems — is a confirmed near-term issue with no fully resolved solution. More broadly, as with the rest of Europe, more comprehensive French rearmament in the missile domain cannot be expected before the mid-2030s, leaving the late-2020s window, which European officials have identified as potentially the period of greatest danger, unaddressed.

That said, French efforts have, in part, been more decisive than those of other European states. This is especially true of more affordable deep-strike capabilities, where France has placed firm development and procurement contracts — if only in limited quantities and for proof-of-concept purposes — while other European states remain stuck in planning phases. If France stays on course and pursues these programs with discipline, it could emerge as Europe’s leader in this capability area.

Picture: Ukrainian Armed Forces, 14th UAV Regt

In March 2026, Ukraine’s strategic air campaign targeting Russian energy infrastructure — oil-related facilities in particular — reached a new peak. By some estimates, Ukraine launched more long-range drone strikes than Russia that month, employing over 7,000 systems, some reaching as deep as 1,500 kilometers into Russian territory.

The veracity of these figures is difficult to confirm. Still, the campaign's results speak for themselves, likely crossing thresholds earlier phases did not reach: cumulative damage to Russian energy infrastructure now appears to be outpacing Russia’s capacity to repair and replace it.

This post assesses what Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign has achieved in recent months, how Ukraine got there, and what the implications might be.

The damage

Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian oil infrastructure has escalated sharply since January 2026. Early strikes targeted the Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar and the Almetyevsk oil processing unit in Tatarstan. The campaign intensified in late March and early April, hitting a broader set of targets: the Baltic export terminals at Ust-Luga and Primorsk, the Yaroslavl refinery near Moscow, the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in Kstovo (which supplies roughly 30% of Moscow-region gasoline), and — most recently — the Sheskharis terminal and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium facility in Novorossiysk.

The cumulative impact has been substantial. Russian oil exports fell 43% in the week of 22–29 March, from 4.07 to 2.32 million barrels per day, costing an estimated $1 billion in lost revenue for that week alone. Reuters estimates strikes on refineries have reduced Russian refining capacity by approximately 17%, or 1.1 million barrels per day. At peak disruption, roughly 40% of Russian export capacity was offline, though this figure reflects the combined effects of the Druzhba pipeline closure, tanker seizures, and drone strikes.

Independent verification of specific damage figures remains difficult. That said, the intensity and success of Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign have very likely reached levels not seen since the start of the war.

How we got here

The success of Ukraine’s deep-strike drone campaign is not accidental. It reflects sustained planning and shaping efforts, compounded by industrial bottlenecks on the Russian side.

First, in late 2024, Zelensky made conventional long-range drones and mini cruise missiles a major priority in Ukraine’s defense industrial policy. Production ramped up through 2025, and Ukraine may have reached critical mass by early 2026. Ukraine’s inability to shift a meaningful share of production toward heavier and more capable missile systems remains a constraint. Still, shortfalls in individual system capabilities have likely been partially offset by deploying ever-larger numbers of lighter systems en masse against Russian facilities.

Second, Ukraine has pursued a highly effective suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) campaign, systematically degrading Russia’s integrated air and missile defense capabilities. Analysts from Tochnyi, in a highly recommended report, indicate that between June 2025 and March 2026, Ukraine conducted confirmed engagements against 237 air defense-related targets, including launcher units and radars, and 196 radar and electronic warfare systems, in each case very likely severely damaging or destroying them.

The consequences of these air defense suppression strikes are non-linear. Given Russia’s vast geographic expanse, overlapping air defense coverage is difficult to maintain, and individual losses can lead to the total loss of control over an area, immediately multiplying the attack vectors available to Ukraine. Russia’s apparent unwillingness to redeploy assets from the dense air and missile defense ring around Moscow — likely out of concern about bringing the war’s realities closer to the regime’s doorstep — is compounding the problem.

Third, Russia’s already overstretched war economy likely finds it difficult to mobilize the resources — in raw materials and manpower — needed to meaningfully increase air defense production, at least not without directly affecting output in other areas. Technical constraints further limit Russia’s ability to quickly repair infrastructure damage, particularly when strikes have damaged more advanced components. Contacts in the Norwegian oil industry have told me that while Chinese technology provides some relief, it cannot fully replace the lack of spare parts from Western suppliers.

Implications for the war

The strike campaign alone does not win Ukraine the war, nor does it eliminate Russia’s economic potential. Russia’s refining capacity remains among the largest in the world, with excess capacity to buffer the domestic fuel supply. Gasoline prices have risen, and export bans have been imposed intermittently, but fuel availability has not collapsed. Some manufacturing and processing capacity is also being dispersed eastward, beyond the reach of Ukrainian long-range drones and cruise missiles.

These points are valid, but these efforts cannot shield Russia’s war-industrial system from the blow. Dispersal is slow, costly, and logistically inefficient; it does not restore destroyed capacity and introduces supply chain friction that compounds production shortfalls. Capital expenditure on new facilities also reduces fiscal resources available for the primary war effort. Surplus capacity was already being drawn down before the deep-strike campaign intensified in 2026. Most critically, export infrastructure cannot be relocated. Primorsk, Ust-Luga, and Novorossiysk are fixed assets that will remain as vulnerable as they are central to Russia’s economy.

The cumulative effects of these constraints are real, bearing meaningfully on Russia’s budget and planning even if they fall short of collapsing its capacity to wage war. In this regard, the analogy to the Allied strategic bombing campaign against the Nazi German war economy in World War II, which I have drawn previously, remains as valid as ever.

The success of Ukraine’s effort cannot be judged solely by the absolute reduction in output achieved. It must be judged against what remains of Russian capacity relative to where it would be without the campaign. Nazi German war-industrial output continued to rise through mid-1944, yet remained significantly below what it would have been absent Allied bombing. Similarly, Russian oil-related revenues have not collapsed, but are measurably lower than they would otherwise be, and the Russian state’s fiscal planning around oil income has been materially undermined.

Parallels and contrasts to the Iran War

There is an instructive parallel and contrast to draw between Ukraine’s use of airpower against Russia and that of the United States and Israel against Iran. In both cases, actors have attempted a strategic air campaign to bring the adversary to its knees.

In the American and Israeli case, this involved counterleadership and counterforce strikes targeting fielded forces, command and control, and production facilities, intended to achieve swift effects. The campaign succeeded in part, notably in degrading Iranian launch capacity and likely reducing Iranian missile and drone production, but fell short of the decisive results American and Israeli planners likely had anticipated. Iranian warfighting capacity had been significantly diminished by the time the ceasefire took effect, but it had not been broken. In that sense, the strategic air campaign failed in its primary purpose: translating the use of force into a decisive political outcome.

In the Ukrainian case, the strategic interdiction campaign has been ongoing since 2024. The results have not been decisive, but the instrumentality of the effort — the link between military action and political aims — is considerably clearer. The effects are latent rather than decisive, yet they constitute one of the most effective tools available to Ukraine for degrading Russian capacity and generating coercive leverage.

This contrast offers a broader insight into the utility of strategic airpower, including in the missile age. Strategic airpower need not be decisive to matter. In the vast majority of cases, it cannot produce decisive effects in the first place. Rather than outright dismissing its utility on those grounds, however, as has become fashionable, analysts would do better to recognize and account for the latent, war-shaping effects that strategic airpower can produce.