Yasir Atalan, Erik Tiersten-Nyman, and Benjamin Jensen
Moscow’s aerial campaign appears to be entering a new phase that sees higher ballistic missile strikes, sustained Shahed salvos, lower Ukrainian intercept rates, and increasingly fragmented launch patterns driven by industrial production cycles rather than coordinated operational design. These trends show that Russia’s strike campaign is now shaped more by what its factories can produce than by integrated battlefield planning. To counter this turn, Ukraine’s foreign backers must undermine the illicit supply network that allows Russia, despite sanctions, to import electronic components.
In October 2025, Russia conducted one of its most intensive strike months of the entire war. Moscow launched approximately 5,300 Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 74 cruise missiles, and 148 ballistic missiles, marking a sustained high pressure across all three systems while also reviving its campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. This represents not only the largest ballistic missile salvo since the start of the conflict, but also one of the few months in which all systems operated simultaneously at above-average levels.
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