Ukraine remade air defence, but Russia has changed its attacks

KYIV, Ukraine – Ukrainian troops returned home from training in the United States and Germany three years ago adept at the standard way of using the Patriot system so critical to air defences. But with limited supplies and nonstop Russian barrages, they quickly realised they would need to rewrite the rules.

So the Ukrainians started to experiment.

For example, each battery, or firing unit, in the mobile surface-to-air Patriot defence system holds interceptors that are launched to stop ballistic missiles midair, before they crash onto the earth.

The Ukrainians learnt to often fire just one interceptor at incoming ballistic missiles instead of the usual two or more because of shortages of the expensive American-made weapons.

They also set the Patriots to manual mode to avoid automatic firing on targets like slow-moving, inexpensive drones that could be taken down by other means.

They learnt to shoot down drones with machine guns operated from rooftops, truck beds and helicopters and, more recently, with interceptor drones that can take down the Russian drones mid-flight.

Ukrainian forces largely reserve the Patriots for trying to stop only the fastest-moving ballistic missiles.

These tactics – described in interviews with Ukrainian air defence commanders and experts – were once viewed as the last resort of a scrappy military with limited resources. But such adaptation is increasingly important as Ukrainian cities face an onslaught of barrages from Russia, as they did with an attack on July 6.

The evolution of tactics is also becoming an essential battlefield model as the war in Iran and the attacks in the Persian Gulf have drained global supplies of the most advanced Patriot interceptors.

Ukrainian soldiers have already deployed to the Gulf to train local troops on cheaper and more effective tactics to intercept drones.

“We initially used the tactics and the knowledge that we had been taught in America,” said Viacheslav Aheiev, the commander of a Patriot unit in Ukraine who trained on the system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

Once combat use began, he said, Ukrainians realised they had “to introduce some of our own experience and skills, and slightly change the tactics of employment, moving away from the templates that we had been taught in the United States”.

Other tactics the Ukrainians have adopted include learning to “shoot and scoot”, quickly moving the batteries after firing to prevent Russia from targeting the batteries in counterstrikes.

They also employ deception to lure Russian fire away, hiding their real Patriot batteries under camouflage while producing realistic decoys that run just US$30,000 (S$38,800) apiece. A fully loaded Patriot system is worth roughly US$1 billion.

Several countries have also reached out to Ukraine requesting exports of Patriot decoys, according to a leading manufacturer of the devices who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his factories are top Russian targets.

Despite the innovation, the Ukrainian approach is far from enough to keep the country from being hammered by Russian missiles and drones.

Russia regularly launches barrages of various types of missiles and drones that overwhelm Ukraine’s exhausted, overworked and dangerously undersupplied air defence operators. In particular, Moscow has ramped up production of ballistic missiles.

Ballistic missiles move much faster than cruise missiles and Patriots are the only air defence system in Ukraine’s arsenal that can shoot them down. Ukraine has other air defence systems that can intercept cruise missiles.

In the attack early on July 6 that killed at least 12 people, Russia launched 68 missiles and 351 drones into Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s air force. None of the 23 ballistic missiles were intercepted but most of the cruise missiles were.

In another overnight attack on July 1, at least 30 people were killed in Kyiv, Ukraine, including many buried when an apartment building was struck. Ukraine intercepted just four of the 24 ballistic missiles in that salvo.

So far in 2026, Russia has launched 521 ballistic missiles at Ukraine, more than twice as many as in the same period in 2025. Ukraine has knocked down 164 of them, according to a New York Times data set based on numbers from Ukraine’s air force.

While other countries make various interceptor systems, the Patriot and its most advanced interceptor missile, the PAC-3, are in short supply globally.

Ukraine does not disclose its remaining stockpile, but its struggles to intercept most ballistics and its urgent pleas for new shipments of interceptors suggest the remaining supply is low.

In the aftermath of recent Russian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has pleaded for the United States to fast-track a request for a production licence that would allow Ukraine to build more Patriot batteries and interceptors at home.

The United States owns the rights to the technology, and other countries cannot replicate the design without approval. For now, Germany and Japan are the only two other countries that have permission to build the systems.

The most advanced radar seekers are currently made only in the United States. Speeding up production by allowing Ukraine to build the critical components, Zelensky said, would also help Washington gain access to supplies for itself “whenever needed”.

“We hope for a positive response from President Trump to protect lives,” Zelensky said last week.

Aheiev was awarded Ukraine’s highest honour for shooting down the first ballistic missile with a Patriot in 2023, proving the system’s effectiveness in combat.

But the launchers sometimes sit half-empty, or worse. Only a slow trickle enters Ukraine through a programme under which European partners buy supplies from the United States and then transfer them to Ukraine.

Ukrainian operators are forced to ration their supplies even more than usual and make risky decisions a better-supplied military could avoid.

“Emotionally, at the beginning, it was not easy because you realise the cost of every decision and every action,” said Dmytro, the commander of another Patriot air defence unit that operates in eastern Ukraine.

He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name because Patriot commanders remain top Russian targets.

The commander, who trained in Germany, said he had found motivation in knowing “that the results of our work help save people’s lives”. Still, he feels the shortage of supplies constantly. He knows each attack could kill innocent civilians like his own parents, who live in a region of Ukraine that his unit oversees.

But significant resupply anytime soon remains unlikely. The shortage caused by the war with Iran has made Ukraine even less of a priority, said Tom Karako, a missile defence analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The US is trying to rapidly increase production for itself, to replenish everything we just shot up over the past six months,” he said. “Everyone wants more, and not everyone can have more all at the same time.”

Ukraine is designing its own air defence systems, which are not likely to be as effective as Patriots yet could at least offer some additional protection. But rolling out those weapons will take time, and in the interim, Russian attacks will most certainly continue.

“Civilians are dying – entire families are being killed,” Aheiev said. “We need more missiles. We need these missiles as much as we need air.” NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.