Europe's Missile Gap: How Russia Outcompetes Europe in the Conventional Missile Domain

Fabian Hoffmann

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Europe’s position in the missile domain is becoming increasingly precarious. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Russian missile production has surged.

Rather than closing the missile gap, Europe — by relying on a missile defense-centric strategy — is falling further behind. In this post, I detail Russian missile production numbers and compare them to European and U.S. output of missile defense interceptors.

To keep this post manageable, I’ll focus on ballistic missile production and ballistic missile defense. A future post may address cruise missiles and drones.

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Russian conventional ballistic missile production

Russia currently produces two types of conventional ballistic missiles relevant to NATO-Russia conventional warfighting scenarios:

9M723 short-range ballistic missiles, ground-launched via the Iskander-M system, and

Kh-47M2 Kinzhal medium-range ballistic missiles, air-launched from bomber and fighter-bomber aircraft.

According to the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (HUR), Russia currently produces a combined total of 840 to 1,020 ground-launched 9M723 and air-launched Kh-47M2 Kinzhal short- to medium-range ballistic missiles annually.

This marks a rather substantial increase compared to the previous estimates shared by the HUR in December 2024. Production of the 9M723 short-range ballistic missile, for instance, appears to have risen by approximately 15 to 40 percent.