“There is no country in the world being attacked with such amount of ballistic missiles,” a Saudi official once remarked about the Houthi siege of Riyadh. Now, Ukrainian leaders can say the same with an ominous twist. The missiles bombarding their cities no longer travel in expected paths. They are warping the laws of engagement, literally, during flight.
Russian has re-configured two of its most potent ballistic platforms, the truck-mounted Iskander-M and the air-launched Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, to counter the sole system in Ukraine capable of shooting them down: the Patriot, made by the United States. The changes are easily confused into simplicity in design but deadly in impact. Instead of following a typical ballistic path, the missiles now make sudden sideways maneuvers or dramatic terminal dives. These tactics, carried out in the last third of a second before collision, take advantage of the Patriot’s use of predictive tracking, causing interceptors to pursue targets that no longer have their predicted trajectory.
The outcomes are quantifiable. Ukraine’s rate of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles, which was 37 percent in August, fell to only 6 percent in September, even though there had been fewer launches. Statistics gathered by the Center for Information Resilience and verified by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency indicate that on several occasions June 28, July 9, and again in early September whole salvos of Iskanders avoided Patriot fire. On one day late in June, Ukrainian crews intercepted just one of seven incoming missiles.
The Patriot system, deployed in Ukraine in 2023, is centered around the PAC-3 MSE interceptor, an active radar seeker-guided hit-to-kill missile cued by the AN/MPQ-65 radar. It is intended to attack ballistic targets in their terminal phase at altitudes of up to 35 kilometers and ranges of about 60 kilometers. Against ballistic missiles on a fixed trajectory, the system’s engagement programs can compute an intercept point with high accuracy. But the Russian enhancements which Ukrainian sources indicate might also cover radar decoys and electronic countermeasures introduce ambiguity into such calculations, reducing the system’s probability of kill.
It is not the first time that a ballistic missile has been modified for maneuverability. The Kinzhal itself, which NATO has dubbed “Killjoy,” is based on the Iskander-M but specialized for launch from aircraft, with a range over 2,000 kilometers and terminal dive speeds approaching Mach 10. Both employ solid-fuel propulsion and high-accuracy inertial guidance updated by satellite command. The new updates seem to configure the guidance software to allow high-g terminal maneuvers without sacrificing accuracy, a feature that requires heavy-duty control actuators and structural support to endure aerodynamic forces.
The tactical impact is enhanced by the economics of the trade. Russian production, based at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, now manufactures 60 to 70 Iskander-Ms and 10 to 15 Kinzhals per month, with an estimated unit price of $400,000–$500,000. In comparison, every PAC-3 MSE interceptor costs around $4 million. In a normal engagement, two or three interceptors are launched per incoming missile, so halting a six-missile salvo can cost $48 million–$72 million in interceptors over double the Russian production cost of the attacking force.
Production asymmetry makes the problem worse. Russia’s state-subsidized, vertically integrated missile production works under throughput mandates, with supply chains insulated from commercial bottlenecks. NATO-aligned interceptor production is still held down by peacetime contracting schemes and component shortages, with U.S. production estimated at 600 PAC-3 MSE units in 2025 and a ceiling of 650 by 2027. Japan contributes only 30 units per year. Ukraine has six to eight Patriot batteries, but as of mid-2025, forward-positioned batteries had spent their PAC-3 stocks.
The missile defense challenge is also compounded by Russia’s operational strategy. Missiles are launched from several locations and frequently interspersed with cruise missiles and drones, overwhelming defenses. In August 2024, Russia launched 35.8 missiles daily on average, a pace maintained through supply from Iran, North Korea, and China. Despite an aggregate war-time intercept rate of 79.8 percent for all missile types combined, the decline in ballistic missile kills constitutes a key weakness.
For Ukraine, the costs are direct. Ballistic missiles have been employed not just against military but also against drone manufacturing facilities, energy installations, and civilian areas. A August 28 attack on a Bayraktar drone parts factory in Kyiv also hit the adjacent EU delegation and British Council offices. Every successful penetration highlights the strategic advantage Russia derives from compelling Ukraine to burn precious interceptors at unsustainable rates.
As one erstwhile Ukrainian official described it, the missile upgrades are “a game changer for Russia.” The words are not exaggeration. In missile wars, the fight between offense and defense is usually resolved not by a singular discovery but by incremental adjustments that alter the cost-benefit equation. In this chapter, the advantage has skewed in the direction of the offense and the defenders are losing their chances.
