Mykhailo Fedorov reveals struggle to secure Patriot missiles and Western support
uawire.org
uawire.org
But it's also exposing the effectiveness of asymmetric warfare. A single patriot missile, a single one, costs around $ 4 million, and its the only weapon that may intercept missiles that cost 1.5 up to 40 times less.
Even when taking the major Russian ballistic missiles like the Kh101, the Iskander and Kalibr the economics are better for the Russians between 4 and 1.5 ratio.
Moreover NATO has no weapon that can intercept the Iskanders which have had so far a 90% effectiveness. Good thing that Russia cannot mass produce them.
But here's the most interesting part: what you launch to intercept is not based on the cost of what's attacking you, but on the potential damage of not intercepting it.
If a 50k Shahed drone is on course to hit your command center or expensive aircraft you may still have to launch a Patriot to intercept it, you can't risk your high command being eliminated because the attacking weapon was cheap.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/30/us-firm-drone-...
If you can't defend yourself, then it is increasingly difficult to attack.
The images out of Russia are a little different. Billions of dollars of plant and equipment blown up, hundreds of ships disabled, entire Wildberry warehouses covering acres going up in smoke. It doesn't seem to be in the same ballpark as a few days outage while you move stock and employees to a new location.
Maybe I'm missing something.
What we're seeing here isn't some great asymmetry, it's disgusting failures of leadership both when starting a war nobody wanted, and failing to end it before wasting billions in exquisite kit that was designed to open up near-peers to SEAD/DEAD.
But you used the word 'want'. I don't imagine anyone wants to be involved. Everyone who is wants the other side to stop fighting.
I used to think like this as well, then I realized “how much do I value an apartment building full of people?” - which are often Russia’s targets.
You don't spend money to do so if you can hit more precious military or logistic or energy infrastructure.
It’s a part of Moscow’s strategy to weaken civilian resolve. They did the same thing in Chechnya.
Let alone the fact that you can weaken civilian resolve better by hitting logistical hubs and energy infrastructure.
Of course, unless you have 40x the budget of the enemy forever, it's not sustainable. Also, how fast can you produce your $1M missile, vs. the enemy's $25k Shahed?
I have been arguing that Shahed-style (cheap/easy to build/very long-range) cruise missiles completely changed the nature of warfare, for years now. A saturation attack like that is currently possible for a non-peer to pull off, and is currently not fully defendable.
US and other military procurement folks have been asleep at the wheel on this for what, 4 years now? The proof is what Iran was able to do. How did not they see this coming? This should be a huge public scandal.
If NATO was fighting Russia, launch aircraft (and airbases) would be prime targets. Ukraine fights the way it does because of very limited funds and resources.
>Russia’s Iskander-M ‘Game-Changer’ Dodges Patriot in Final Seconds, Rewriting Ukraine’s Missile-Defence War https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/russia-iskander-m-termina...
And the upgrades really weren't much except adding decoys that had always been an option with Iskander.
Now that worldwide inventories of PAC3-MSE are almost non-existent, Russia will push its MIRBM attacks over the next year or more. Ukraine really doesn't have many options other than to continuing their drone offensive against deep targets in Russia.
It was a bit of a mistake of the US not to use that stuff for Iran which the Ukrainians would have been delighted to supply.
ABMs are very slow to build, expensive, and doubtfully effective red herrings. PAC-3 manufacturing: regardless of having perfect, prioritized intellectual property sharing arrangements, it would still involve competing with limited quantities from monopoly critical suppliers and delay from deep levels of supply chain parts and assemblies vendors.
It would be better to catch SSM launchers on roads, rails, and inland waterways and dismantle the supply chain that produces/imports them and their parts with long range kinetic sanctions. (Kill the archer and arrow maker, not the arrows.)
Incidentally, someone in Russia may have believed they had a surplus of S-400's because it was using them as SSMs in nightly strikes on civilians rather than as SAMs and ABMs even though its last reported manufacturing capacity was only 40 units/month.
SAM - Surface-to-Air Missile
SSM - Surface-to-Surface Missile
ABM - Anti-Ballistic Missile (Anti-SSM)
Either Zelenskyy is the wartime boss and has the authority to make decisions after some input or not, but he needs to make the final say and not be second-guessed constantly. Rule by committee at the very top doesn't scale, and it doesn't scale in wartime especially. People are free to have and express opinions though, even if they maybe projecting anger from other matters towards something trivial (bikeshedding).