Russian drones and cruise missiles are an ongoing threat to Ukraine. In July, Ukraine shot down or suppressed 87% of the Russian drones, 69% of the cruise missiles, but only 29% of the ballistic missiles.
Shooting down 29% was only possible because Poland sent 5 of their 208 PAC-3 missiles, causing a domestic controversy. Poland was told by the US and NATO that for every missile sent to Ukraine, they would receive 10 within 24 hours if they were threatened with attack. So sending 5 missiles now would theoretically provide them with 50 in an emergency. This presumes there would be 50 PAC-3 missiles available somewhere and that the countries that have them would be willing to part with them in a dangerous time. It also depends on if the US is involved, especially with the Trump administration. His clear promise to grant licenses for Ukraine to produce PAC-3 missiles has been revoked.
Ukraine has few weapons that can stop the ballistic missiles and that won’t change anytime soon.
Missile Interception
While cruise missiles use a level flight path, ballistic missiles have a high parabolic path. The intercontinental ballistic missiles can fly 1-2,000 km into space before returning to earth, while the shorter-ranged missiles might fly 40-50 km into the sky before heading down again.
Most air defense missiles that intercept cruise missiles or aircraft use airburst warheads because it increases the chances of hitting the target and the shrapnel is usually sufficient to destroy enough of the flight surface of the aircraft to prevent it from flying. When a ballistic missile is intercepted on its near-vertical downward arc, its mass and speed are not dependent on flight surfaces to keep falling down, so air burst warheads are usually ineffective against ballistic missiles. The US THAAD and PAC-3 (Patriot) missiles are ‘hit-to-kill’ missiles that use their kinetic energy to destroy the ballistic missile in its terminal dive phase.
The short-range ballistic missiles might fly at speeds as low as Mach 3 or 4 at their apogee and exceed Mach 5 on their descent, which is the speed that the German V-2 missile achieved in 1945. The Russian Iskander is around Mach 6-7 and the Kinzhal could be up to Mach 10. The S-400 missile used as a ballistic missile (called the RM-48U) has a speed of Mach 8.2.
The PAC-3 missile (60 km range) from the Patriot system has a speed of over Mach 5, but it doesn’t have to chase the ballistic missiles, it only has to predict where they will be at a specific time and meet them there. The S-400 interceptor missile (400 km range and Mach 8.2-14) and the THAAD (150-300 km range and Mach 8.2) have higher speeds, not to chase the ballistic missile, but to make sure they reach the calculated intercept point in time while flying those longer distances.
Some ballistic missiles, such as the Iskander and Kinzhal, have a modified ballistic flight path to try and throw off the calculations of the intercepting missiles. This is called a suppressed trajectory and the missiles that use it are called “aeroballistic” or “quasi-ballistic” missiles. The speed of aeroballistic missiles is slower than those using a standard ballistic flight path, but if they change direction, the intercepting missiles have to detect the changes, recalculate, and head to the new intercept point. If it can’t detect that new flight path and recalculate in time, it will miss.
The Patriot system is pretty effective against aeroballistic missiles, detecting the course changes and calculating the new intercept point while the ballistic missile is traveling 2.8-3.4 km per second and the PAC-3 missile is closing at over 1.7 km per second. In one of its first engagements in Ukraine, a Patriot system shot down a Kinzhal and then a half dozen more in the next couple of weeks.
A single PAC-3 missile has a 60 to 70% chance to shoot down a Russian ballistic missile, and a standard tactic is to fire two interceptors to increase the odds of shooting down a single ballistic missile to about 88%. If a third missile was fired, the chance of at least one interception would be 96%. When Ukraine first deployed the Patriot, they often fired two and sometimes three interceptors at each ballistic missile. Here is a video in which a ballistic missile had already been hit and its debris was hit by a second missile.
The engagement sequence of detection, classification, launch, and intercept, can occur in under a minute, depending on the threat’s range and speed, and there is rarely an opportunity to shoot, see if the target was hit, and if not, shoot again. That is called shoot-look-shoot. With short engagement windows they have to employ shoot-shoot-look, firing multiple missiles off, not knowing if a second or third missile is wasted because an earlier missile hit.
The interception rate of all the ballistic missiles launched in a single attack depends on several factors, such as whether it detects and calculates the flight path in time, whether there is a Patriot missile launcher in range and whether that launcher has any PAC-3 missiles.
The first is that Russia looked at the data and realized that the suppressed aeroballistic flight paths weren’t an effective tactic against the agile PAC-3 missile. In September, Russia started using steeper trajectories. It would be easier to calculate the impact point but there would be a much smaller window to detect, acquire and engage the ballistic missile because of the increased speed of a more vertical descent. The further the ballistic missile is from the Patriot launcher, the smaller that engagement window would be. Maneuvering can still happen and the higher speeds mean that the time to detect the change in the flight path and calculate the new impact point also has a smaller window.
It is also possible that a Patriot system is not deployed within range of the target, but Kyiv has always been protected by at least one Patriot system and the lack of engagements just confirms the reports of the shortage of missiles. With the shortage, Ukraine no longer launches multiple missiles at a single ballistic missile, so even when a missile is engaged, there’s a greater chance it will not be destroyed.
Ballistic Interceptor Missile Production
Currently, the US produces 600 PAC-3 missiles a year. This will increase to 2,000 a year by 2030, but it takes two years to build a missile once a production line is established and the contract to increase production was signed in January 2026. Japan builds 30 PAC-3 missiles a year. Germany will start producing 250-300 PAC-3 missiles a year starting sometime in 2027.
The SAMP/T hasn’t been effective against ballistic missiles and they are only producing 80-100 Aster 30 missiles a year with plans to increase that to 300 a year by 2028.
Fire Point plans to turn missiles that were produced into the Freya interceptor with the help of German seekers, but there’s no guarantee that project will be completed. The optimistically reported plan is to be ready by the end of 2027. It currently has a fragmentation warhead, which is generally ineffective on ballistic missiles. There are plans to equip the Freya as a hit-to-kill missile but that would mean adding a lateral maneuvering system, which it does not currently have. Fire Point has a history of over-promising but has sometimes delivered.
Electronic Warfare
Ukraine cannot rely on air defense missiles to defeat ballistic missiles. There aren’t enough Patriot systems to cover the entire country and, more importantly, there aren’t enough PAC-3 missiles.
Ukraine does have LIMA Quant electronic warfare systems that defeated 58 of 59 Kinzhals from last summer to April. Three more Kinzhals were defeated as of 7 July. LIMA is effective out to 300 km against Kinzhals by providing false locations to the missile’s navigation system. If the false location indicates that the missile flew by its target, it conducts a high-G turn to ‘head back’ to the target. That turn often exceeds the structural integrity of the missile and it falls apart mid-air.
The debris of these missiles fell to the ground largely intact, allowing a detailed study of the missiles. Ukraine discovered that the calculations they used to jam the Kinzhal were correct, and they noticed that the Comet antenna array was located facing sideways, not upwards. This required 127 times less energy to suppress the antenna. It also helps that Kinzhal flies at an altitude of 20-30 km, which is a more favorable angle to attack the antenna than the angle of Iskander antennas at high altitude.
LIMA has reduced the accuracy of Iskander through jamming but has not been able to achieve the more difficult spoofing and providing false coordinates by substituting its own navigation signals.
The Iskander reaches 50 km in altitude and can reach as high as 100 km when attacking targets at shorter ranges. This makes it more difficult to attack the directional antenna. The higher altitude also means a more vertical dive, which translates to a faster speed and shorter engagement window for PAC-3 missiles. The higher ballistic arc does shorten the 400-500 km horizontal range of the Iskander.
Destruction of Launchers
Another method of defeating ballistic missiles is to destroy their launchers.
As of June 2025, Russia had 162 Iskander launchers. Over the years, ‘several’ have been hit, but some of the launchers hit were only damaged. Many launchers have been hiding in hangers at military airfields. It takes 40-50 minutes for a launcher to travel to a launch site, which is usually 40-60 km from the border. Once there, it takes 20 minutes to ready a missile for launch.
It is difficult to consistently detect the movement of the launchers, and once it is stationary at a launch site Ukraine has a limited engagement window. They have successfully struck at least three launchers with HIMARS in the past, destroying one and damaging two. Aircraft could be used but they have to be in the air and armed, which means they launcher has to be detected early in its movement. The FP-7 ballistic missile has a 200 km range. It would take 15 minutes to set up and has a maximum flight time of 250 seconds, so it would need to be in range and notified while the launcher was still traveling.
The Kinzhal is launched by the Su-34, MiG-31K and the Tu-22M3 bomber. There may be 24 MiG-31K left. Russia stopped building them in 1993 and two years ago they talked about the need to produce more engines to keep the planes flying since the engines only have a service life of 300 hours. The Su-34 first launched a Kinzhal in September 2023, and there might be 150 of them and they are still being produced. There are about 50 Tu-22M3 bombers and they aren’t being produced anymore. While attacking any airframe is useful, there are a lot of launch platforms for so few Kinzhal missiles.
Sanctions on Components
Fragments from an Iskander used on Kyiv on 10 July show that the electronics were produced in 2024 and 2025, which dates the production of that missile to 2025. There were 140 components from the United States, Taiwan, Switzerland, Japan, China and Belarus, 62 of which came from the US. Without Western components, Russia could not produce the Iskander missile.
There are also foreign components in the Kinzhal missile.
By contrast, there were a thousand Russian and a hundred Belarusian parts in the Oreshnik missile, but no foreign components. The technology inside the Oreshnik dates from the 1960’s and 1970’s, and the missile is very inaccurate, but is otherwise reliable and difficult to suppress with electronic warfare.
Sanctions do make production more expensive for Russia and reduce the rate of production to some extent. They should be continued and enforced more rigorously, but they will not be an effective way to eliminate production.
Destruction of Russian Ballistic Missile Production
If ballistic missiles can’t be built then they won’t be launched.
The Kremniy El semiconductor, Bolkhov Semiconductor, Voronezh Semiconductor, NIIFI Enterprise (sensors) and two Zelenograd microelectronics facilities have been attacked. They all produce components for ballistic and cruise missiles.
The Kamensky Combine, Redkino Experimental plant, Krasnozavodsk Chemical plant, Nevinnomyssk facility and Orenburg gas processing plant all produce rocket fuel or components for rocket fuel and have been attacked.
The Votkinsk missile assembly plant that produces Iskander missiles has been attacked once, and the JSC VNIIR-Progress plant in Cheboksary that makes CRPA Komet antennas for the missiles has been attacked four times. The last attack destroyed a building where research was being conducted.
Many of these attacks took place in 2026. There has been a slight drop in the production of Iskander missiles this year:
-In May 2024, Russia reportedly produced 40 Iskanders and 4-5 Kinzhals a month.
-In 2025, 58 Iskander, 5 Kinzhals a month, and 17 RM-48U (the S-400 ground attack variant) missiles a month. The RM-48U was used for the first time in January 2026. They are inaccurate but can be effective against a large target with a 180 kg warhead.
-In April 2026, Russia was producing 58 Iskander missiles, and increased the RM-48U missile production to 40 missiles a month. One report says Russia was producing 5 Kinzhals a month and another said 10-15. Ukrainian intelligence says 10 Kinzhals were produced each month.
-In July 2026, Russia is producing 50 Iskander ballistic missiles, 5 Kinzhals and 40 RM-48U missiles, which is a reduction of 8 Iskander and 5 Kinzhal missiles per month.
(For cruise missiles, Russia currently produces 15 Iskander-K cruise missiles, 2 Kalibr, 60 Kh-101, 10 Kh-32, 5 Onyx, 3 Zircon and 4 Kh-69 missiles each month, which is 99 cruise missiles a month).
While there was little change in the number of missiles built each month, the attacks likely suppressed an increase in production. Many facilities have been attacked with 60-120 kg warheads on drones, which have been very effective against refineries and oil depots, but often results in light to moderate damage to other facilities.
For a comparison, the Kremniy El microelectronics plant in Bryansk was hit six times by drones that only caused light damage. Then, on 10 March 2026, 7 Storm Shadow missiles with 450 kg warheads hit the plant and devastated the main building No. 4. Even so, there was a drone raid on 7 July that disrupted efforts to rebuild the facility.
The first attack with a Flamingo missile occurred at the end of August 2025. Its 1,150 kg warhead does a lot of damage when it hits. There have been ten attacks, six of which were successful. Three of those successful attacks include the February strike on the Votkinsk plant that assembles Iskander ballistic missiles, the June mission that destroyed a VNIIR-Progress building that researches and develops the Komet CRPA antenna in Cheboksary, and the June attack that damaged three buildings of the Titan-Barrikady plant in Volgograd. Titan-Barrikady is the only plant that builds Iskander launchers.
Anatolii Khrapchynskyi is a reserve Ukrainian Air Force officer and director at a defense company said that 10 Russian factories that produce ballistic and cruise missiles have been attacked, but there are 1,600 companies that make components for missiles. Continued attacks on the oil and gas facilities could disrupt the logistics of the factories making components, the fuel supply for the Iskander launchers and the production of solid fuel for long-range rockets.
“But there is not enough funding,” Khrapchynskyi said. “If Ukraine is capable of producing, hypothetically, $55 million worth of weapons, the state can purchase only $15 million worth.”
More funding would be available if Ukraine allowed the transfer of technology as part of joint production projects, but Ukraine has only done that on a limited basis.
Summary
The best option Ukraine has to defeat ballistic missiles is to destroy the factories that produce them. They should also continue efforts to find a way to defeat the Iskander and other missiles with electronic warfare.
More drones and missiles would allow them to attack more missile factories. Ukraine needs to weigh the money they could make by exporting drones against the money it would cost to repair the damage done by Russian missiles and drones, plus the lives it would save. A partnership with Europe would provide the money and weapons Ukraine needs now.
The Future
In the larger picture, the world needs to consider the threat of nuclear ballistic missiles and the economics of attritional warfare with ballistic missiles. Addressing only attritional warfare, an Iskander costs $3 million to make and a Kinzhal costs $4.5 million. A PAC-3 Patriot missile costs $4 million and the THAAD missile, which has a longer range, costs at least $12 million.
Focusing on Patriot systems, it costs $4 million to intercept one $3 million Iskander and there’s a 35% chance the interception will fail. If $8 million is expended, there’s a 12% chance it will fail. If $12 million is expended, there is still a 4% chance it will fail.
By comparison, LIMA is effective against Kinzhal at $68,000 per unit. It would cost $5.8 million to protect a large city and $1 billion to protect all of Ukraine. While these costs do not increase with each use, and LIMA has reduced the accuracy of Iskander, electronic warfare is constantly changing. There is a danger that an upgrade to the ballistic missiles might render the EW system ineffective. This has happened before, but when the LIMA system was upgraded it regained its effectiveness.
In 5 months of war with Iran, the US expended 65% of its Patriot missiles (both PAC-2 and PAC-3) leaving them with somewhere between 759 and 827 missiles left. They used 39% of their THAAD interceptors, leaving them with 234 to 278 missiles left. Currently, the US produces 600 Patriot missiles a year with plans to make 2,000 a year. They make 96 THAAD missiles a year with plans to make 400 a year. The US doesn’t use electronic warfare to defeat drones or missiles.
Cheaper interceptors and EW systems, plus attacking launchers, stockpiles and production of ballistic missiles should be considered in the future of attritional warfare. And then, as Iran has shown, planning should consider launch sites, storage and production that are protected by 100 meters of rock or more.
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