A surge in Russian use of ballistic missiles with enhanced maneuvering capabilities has cut into the effectiveness of Ukraine’s Patriot surface-to-air missile systems, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has confirmed. Russian missile strikes, as well as drone attacks, had spiked in recent months, in general, but they have tapered off to a degree recently ahead of a meeting tomorrow between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine has received three Patriot batteries from the United States, as well as two from Germany, one from Romania, and another one consisting of components supplied by Germany and the Netherlands. The Ukrainian armed forces have also received a variety of different interceptors to use with those systems. American authorities announced last month that they were working with European allies to get additional Patriot batteries to Ukraine’s military. Patriot currently represents the only robust defense Ukraine has against incoming ballistic missiles.
However, “the UAF [Ukrainian Air Force] struggled to consistently use Patriot air defense systems to protect against Russian ballistic missiles due to recent Russian tactical improvements, including enhancements that enable their missiles to change trajectory and perform maneuvers rather than flying in a traditional ballistic trajectory,” according to a Special Inspector General report released this week.
This particular passage is cited to “DIA, response to DoD OIG request for information.” The entire report, which was jointly put together by the Offices of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Agency for International Development, discusses U.S. government activities related to Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe between April 1 and June 30.
“For example, [a] June 28 attack included seven ballistic missiles, of which the UAF shot down only one,” the report adds. “A massed attack on July 9 – the largest air attack since the start of the war – included 13 missiles, of which the UAF shot down or suppressed 7.”
The Special Inspector General report does not offer any further details about what specific types of ballistic missiles are at the source of the issue, nor about the “enhancements” that have been made to them. Whether any specific Patriot interceptors have struggled more than others is also unknown.
However, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat did mention Russia’s domestically developed Iskander-M and North Korean-supplied KN-23s in passing when talking publicly about this issue back in May. The Iskander-M and KN-23 are both short-range ballistic missiles. These are also understood to be, by far, the ballistic missiles that Russia most commonly employs in strikes on Ukraine.
“We know [Russia] is improving its ballistic weapons,” Ihnat said, according to a story The Kyiv Independent published on May 24. “It complicates [the interception], but doesn’t make the interception impossible.”
“The flight of a ballistic missile along such a quasi-ballistic trajectory – when the missile doesn’t just fly in a straight line like it’s falling, but actually performs maneuvers in flight – makes it more difficult for the Patriot system, which calculates the interception point using software, to predict exactly where the missile will be,” he continued.
“According to Ihnat, the modified missiles are now equipped with radar-decoy systems and use quasi-ballistic flight paths that make them more difficult to track and intercept using Patriot systems,” The Kyiv Independent‘s report added.
It’s worth noting here that Russia’s heavy use of Iskander-Ms in the opening phases of its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 exposed the existence of a built-in decoy capability that was not previously known, at least publicly. However, there has been evidence since then that this is not necessarily a feature on all Iskander-Ms. As such, Ihnat’s mention of new decoys could reflect a Russian move to start loading them on Iskander-Ms on a more widespread basis. Improved decoys could also have been developed.
Iskander-Ms can be fired along depressed quasi-ballistic trajectories, and there have long been reports that they are capable of a significant degree of maneuvering during flight, specifically to present additional challenges to defenders. How the Russians may have ‘enhanced’ this capability, or expanded their use of it, and why they did not do so before, is unclear. Russia has claimed in the past that the air-launched Kinzhal, which is derived from the Iskander-M, also has a particularly high degree of maneuverability, and those developments may have fed back into the ground-launched missile.
What kind of built-in countermeasure capabilities might be found on the KN-23, which at least looks very similar to the Iskander-M externally, is unknown. It is reportedly capable of performing a “pull-up” maneuver in its terminal phase of flight, again to complicate attempts to intercept it.
Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), separately told TWZ in June that Russia had worked with the North Koreans to improve the KN-23’s effectiveness, particularly in terms of accuracy.
“These improvements could extend beyond the KN-23s. While Budanov did not specify what was changed, this is likely to boost the capabilities of its many other ballistic missiles, extending the dangers beyond the peninsula,” we noted at the time.
“I think our partners are already working to improve the system’s capabilities,” Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Ihnat had also said in May. The recently released Special Inspector General report makes no mention one way or the other of any response to the new developments regarding Russia’s ballistic missile arsenal.
It is important to note that any protracted conflict offers the potential for valuable lessons to be learned, but also the risk of the enemy doing the same. Similarly, persistent combat use of systems like Patriot presents repeated opportunities for adversaries to glean useful intelligence about their capabilities, and then put it to work in developing new and improved weapons and countermeasures. TWZ previously highlighted exactly these issues around U.S. operations against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.
Regardless, all of this is especially worrisome given Ukraine’s reliance on Patriot to defend against ballistic missile attacks, as mentioned earlier. Ukraine also has limited options for bolstering its anti-ballistic missile capabilities and capacity beyond just working to acquire more Patriot systems and interceptors. When Russia invaded in 2022, the Ukrainian military did have a limited number of Soviet-era S-300V1 surface-to-air missile systems, which have a degree of terminal anti-ballistic missile capability, but whether any of them are still in service or not is unclear. Any stocks of available interceptors would have steadily dwindled in the past three years, as well.
Patriot’s now-confirmed struggles with intercepting ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine could have broader ramifications given the importance of the system to other armed forces, including the U.S. military. The U.S. Army is now looking to expand its own overworked Patriot force and improve its capabilities, including through the addition of a new radar, as you can read more about here.
At the same time, as TWZ has reported on previously, the pipeline for new Patriot systems and interceptors is itself strained, in no small part due to a spike in demand prompted by observations of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In July, Switzerland announced that the delivery of its Patriots would be delayed, explicitly to prioritize support for the Ukrainian armed forces.
For Ukraine, more broadly speaking, while Russia has scaled back missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in the lead-up to tomorrow’s summit between Trump and Putin, whether that holds after the talks conclude remains to be seen. Russian and Ukrainian forces are still very actively jockeying for position on the front lines, as well.
“We have a meeting with President Putin tomorrow. I think it’s going to be a good meeting. But the more important meeting will be the second that we’re having,” Trump said while speaking to the press at the White House. “We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, [Ukraine’s] President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not.”
In the meantime, Patriot remains a critical component of Ukraine’s air and missile defense architecture, but the United States has now confirmed that the system has been challenged by improvements Russia has made to its ballistic missile arsenal.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com