National Defense

Russia And Ukraine Hammer Each Other, But Can’t Defend Themselves

(Photo via Noah Eleazar / Unsplash)

As the Ukrainian military faces a critical shortage of missile interceptors, experts differ on what the dwindling supply could mean for the future of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Relentless Russian missile and drone attacks are pushing Ukraine into a corner as the Iran and Russo-Ukrainian Wars strain Western interceptor stockpiles; however, Kyiv has dealt blows of its own deep inside Russian territory. This tit-for-tat exchange has military analysts questioning what will happen next.

Russia launched more than 9,000 strike drones and missiles at Ukraine in July alone, according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, which said its air defenses were operating amid a “critical shortage” of ballistic missile interceptors.

Ukraine’s interceptor shortage comes as the United States is confronting a shortage of its own after heavy missile expenditures in the Iran War.

The U.S. military may have used more than two-thirds of its Patriot missile interceptor stockpile that was available before the Iran War, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“The United States has used about two-thirds of its, maybe 60% of its, Patriots. And we figure that there are about 850 left,” retired Marine Col. and Senior Advisor at CSIS Mark Cancian told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And the problem, the problem is that the White House and the Pentagon don’t want to hold back on those and retain new production for U.S. needs, so it’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to get many or any missiles from the United States.”

CSIS estimates that the U.S. Patriot inventory was roughly 3,100 before the Iran War.

Ukraine was only able to intercept less than 15% of incoming ballistic missiles in July, according to a report from the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. However, it was able to intercept roughly 70% of the incoming cruise missiles and nearly 60% of the Geran drones, according to the report.

“A. Yes, we have an interest in arming Ukraine, and B. we have an interest in greatly spiking our defense production, even if there were no war in Europe, and that logic still holds,” retired U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and the head of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council John Herbst told the DCNF. “So it’s not a surprise to me, after a very intensive use of our conditions in the [Persian] Gulf, we are low on supply.”

‘Severe Strain’

Even Secretary of War Pete Hegseth himself was “recognizing the reality of scarcity” back in February 2025 during a meeting in Brussels before the Iran War began; however, the White House maintains that the U.S. military has more than enough munitions to maintain the U.S. position on the world stage.

Ukraine may be receiving a few Patriots through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, Cancian said. Cancian was not alone in his concerns surrounding missile interceptor stockpiles.

The Pentagon is already attempting to dramatically expand Patriot production. The department announced in January that it intends to increase annual production of PAC-3 MSE interceptors from roughly 600 to 2,000 under a seven-year framework with Lockheed Martin designed in part to replenish U.S. stockpiles.

The scale of the administration’s proposed munitions buildup is apparent in the Army’s fiscal 2027 missile budget. The service is requesting roughly $36.6 billion for missile procurement, compared with a roughly $8 billion fiscal 2026 spending plan, including billions of dollars aimed at accelerating PAC-3 and THAAD production.

“Public reporting this week from Bloomberg, as well as assessments from CSIS and RUSI throughout the Iran war, present a very concerning picture in terms of critical munitions expended and remaining quantities,” senior fellow at the Cato Institute Katherine Thompson told the DCNF. “Moreover, the president’s budget request is its own neon warning sign given the inclusion of an approximately 188% increase in munitions funding and even higher percentage increases in production targets for platforms like Patriot, THAAD, and Tomahawks.”

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 budget requests $1.5 trillion for national defense, the largest defense budget request in U.S. history, including more than $750 billion for military modernization and readiness, according to the Pentagon.

Kyiv says roughly 95% of the Patriot interceptors it currently receives come through the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), under which European and other partner governments finance purchases of U.S.-made weapons.

The reality of the world’s new modern drone and missile wars is simple: offensive options are cheap and plentiful while defensive measures are expensive and running low, creating a new reality of asymmetrical warfare. The average Iranian Shahed or Russian Geran drone costs roughly $35,000 while Patriot missiles cost roughly $4 million each, according to The Military Times.

“The uptick in missile strikes is already underway,” John Venable, senior fellow for airpower studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told the DCNF. “The counter is equally true, and Russia is being struck deeper and more frequently by Ukraine. Not unlike the West, Russia is also starting to see more open floor space in its surface-to-air missile storage facilities. Both sides are under severe SAM strain, and that won’t go away anytime soon.”

This massive economic disparity has made the defense of Ukrainian airspace a near-impossible task. However, the same reality also plays against the Russian Federation.

“Ukraine controls the skies at the mid-range, mid-level range, and their drones are going 1,500 miles into Russia,” Herbst told the DCNF. “And again, the Russian population [may] begin to feel some economic pain and some insecurity because of these Ukrainian deep strikes into Russia, which are only going to become greater and farther reaching. I don’t have any doubt that by the end of this calendar year, if Ukrainian missiles are now flying 3,000 miles into Russia.“

Ukrainian strikes have already knocked out some of Russia’s most important gasoline producers, Reuters reported. The Omsk and NORSI refineries, Russia’s two largest gasoline producers, were forced to halt operations following Ukrainian attacks.

These attacks, among others, have reduced Russia’s gasoline output so significantly that it can only meet 65% of demand.

Russia’s own central bank has acknowledged that rising fuel prices from both the Iran and Russo-Ukrainian Wars are feeding broader inflationary pressures across the economy. Bank of Russia Gov. Elvira Nabiullina said higher fuel prices have begun pushing up prices across a broad range of goods and services and contributed to a surge in household inflation expectations.

The Russian central bank raised its 2026 inflation forecast from 6% to 7% and cut its “key interest rate” to 14% in July.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said its maximum confirmed strike range exceeded 1,243 miles in June, when Ukrainian forces struck 11 Russian oil refineries, while Zelenskyy said an Aug. 10 strike reached a refinery more than 1,553 miles away in Siberia.

Essentially what this means is that the Russians and Ukrainians can both beat each other over the head with drones and missiles, but there is no economical way for either side to soften the blows.

“Ukrainians are suffering attacks that destroy their energy infrastructure and kill people that might have otherwise not occurred,” Defense Priorities Policy Director Benjamin Friedman told the DCNF. “How much effect these attacks change the outcome of the war is less clear. Of course, they matter to morale and in some tactical sense, but deep strikes from both on each other’s population and infrastructure seem mostly to be marginally impactful in terms of battlefield outcomes.”

One expert suggested America is overextended and does not have enough munitions to dominate Iran, Russia and China all at once.

“The implications, as pointed out many times during the Ukraine drawdowns as well, is that the U.S. faces material scarcity and tradeoffs for the foreseeable future, and dealing with this requires disciplined prioritization in ensuring we have the resources to meet our core interests,” Thompson told the DCNF. “It also requires limiting overextension, or, in other words, the commitments the U.S. takes on across multiple theaters, given it is not possible to resource them all.”

“Restocking what the war expended will not be enough to deter or prepare for war against a more capable adversary like China, and building to the arsenal U.S. forces require could take 3.5 to 6 years,” Blake Johnson, the director of communications at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told the DCNF. “That shortfall decreases U.S. leverage over Iran now and drains deterrence in other theaters, since the war moved long-range missiles away from the Pacific to feed this fight, while Beijing is measuring how long Washington could sustain a war over Taiwan and Russia is betting America cannot keep arming Ukraine while it refills its own magazines.”

President Donald Trump said that he wants to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot interceptor missiles while talking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their televised meeting at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey on July 8.

Trump later backed away from that commitment, saying the U.S. had not agreed to transfer the technology and was still discussing the proposal during a cabinet meeting at Camp David on July 31.

“Either we give them interceptors we need for ourselves or to defend Middle East client states, or we don’t,” Friedman told the DCNF. “It will be years before they can produce their own. If we ended the war in Iran because it was draining missile defense stocks we want for Ukraine and other states, that would be a good thing, but that’s because we should end the war anyway.”

“There comes a time when even the most generous nations run out of munitions and treasure they can donate or sell to another cause,” Venable told the DCNF. “The war in Ukraine has been going on for four years and literally drained the global supply [of] artillery. The US is long past the threshold for many other munitions – and we need to make sure we have what we need to fight our own fights.”