For Every Russian Drone That Strikes Ukraine, Two Ukrainian Drones Strike Russia
But Russia has a near monopoly on faster deep strike munitions
On June 15, Russian forces launched 582 one-way attack drones at Ukrainian cities, according to the Ukrainian military.
On Aug. 1, Ukrainian forces launched 1,158 one-way attack drones at Russian targets including refineries and warehouses, according to the Russian military.
While it’s likely the Aug. 1 Ukrainian raids represented a maximal effort, they’re not an extreme outlier. Overall, Ukrainian deep strikes are now routinely outpacing Russian deep strikes.
The problem for Ukraine is the mix of munitions. Slow-flying drones are easy to intercept: both sides usually shoot down around 90% of incoming enemy drones. Cruise missiles are harder to shoot down, but both sides usually down most of them. Especially the subsonic ones.
Supersonic cruise missiles and ballistic missiles traveling several times the speed of sound are much harder to shoot down.
