Gabriel Honrada
Russia’s missiles are outpacing Ukraine’s defenses—and the implications reach well beyond Europe. From South Korea to Taiwan, the US and its allies face the same looming test: intercepting smarter, faster salvos before magazines run dry.
That picture is already visible in Ukraine, where the US Special Inspector General’s latest quarterly report says Kyiv is struggling to stop Russian ballistic missiles because Moscow has adapted its missile tactics in ways that strain Western-supplied air defense systems.
The Special Inspector General’s report notes that Russia has incorporated trajectory-shifting capabilities and mid-course maneuvering into its missiles, preventing them from flying along traditional, predictable arcs that systems like the US-made Patriot are designed to intercept.
Those adaptations have coincided with sharply worse outcomes. In a June 28 attack, Ukrainian forces shot down only one of seven incoming ballistic missiles, while during a massed July 9 strike—the largest since the war began—Ukraine managed to down or suppress just seven of 13 ballistic missiles, according to the same Inspector General report.
The battlefield math is compounded by saturation tactics: hundreds of drones and missiles launched in overlapping waves, forcing Ukraine to spread already limited interceptors thin. Ukrainian defenses, though bolstered by Western deliveries, remain insufficient in scale, and pauses in US assistance have further weakened readiness.
The inability to consistently intercept maneuvering ballistic missiles carries broader consequences. Those lessons resonate in the Indo-Pacific, where North Korea and China are integrating similar technologies into their arsenals, suggesting that Ukraine’s struggles foreshadow what US allies such as South Korea, Japan or Taiwan might face in a barrage.
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