From Stings to Deterrence: The drone army allows Ukraine not to avoid defeat, but remains incomplete without the missile component

The Russia-Ukraine war has almost completely transformed into a war of drones and drone technologies. Against the backdrop of a virtual stalemate along the line of contact, airstrikes deep behind enemy lines have become a 'second front' for both the Russian army and the Ukrainian Armed Forces .

The most significant development in the first half of 2025 has been the sharp increase in the scale of Russian combined attacks using missiles, combat ‘Shaheds’ and decoy drones. Ukraine, for its part, is stepping up its drone offensive against Russian industrial infrastructure, which has already resulted in tangible signs of a petrol crisis in Russia. The effectiveness of attacks on both sides is being boosted by improvements in the performance of their primary strike drones.

The drone race has both qualitative and quantitative dimensions. If one of the main issues in the first year of the war was the shortage of shells on both sides, few now remember that. By the end of 2025, Ukrainian production of various types of drones could reach 4 million, with the total arsenal, including European supplies, rising to 5 million. However, this is only half of what experts believe is needed to shift the balance of power in Ukraine’s favour. Russia’s own strike drone programme is also advancing: production volumes are growing, costs are falling, and the technical characteristics of its drones are improving, which increases the effectiveness of unmanned attacks.

However, the power of Ukraine’s strikes remains limited as long as they rely exclusively on drones and are not combined operations like Russia’s. While the current balance of power in the war is largely determined by the drone race, in the long term the key question for Ukraine remains the development of a missile programme. Such a programme would not only enable Kyiv to carry out combined attacks, as Russia does, but could also become a crucial element of its deterrence strategy, provided that Ukrainian production reaches significant scale and builds up an arsenal of 2,000–4,000 units.

If this scenario unfolds, Ukraine could be regarded as a genuine military power – a state against which waging war would only be possible at the cost of significant, and almost unacceptable, losses for the aggressor.

On the frontlines of aerial war

At this stage, the Russian–Ukrainian war is, in the view of most experts and observers, definitively turning into a war of drones and drone technologies. While experts debate whether this constitutes a fundamental revolution in warfare or simply reflects the specific nature of this conflict, in which neither side possesses powerful air forces or effective means of suppressing enemy air defences (see Meduza's overview of this debate), the course of the conflict and the successes of each side are now defined by the bilateral drone race in which both are engaged. Amid the stalemate on the frontline, with no significant advances in two years of Russian offensives in northern Donbas, aerial strikes deep in enemy territory have become a 'second front' both the Russian army and the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU).

The most significant development in the first half of 2025 has been the dramatic increase in the scale of Russian combined attacks employing missiles, combat Shaheds, and decoy drones (→ Re:Russia: Missile-Financial Balance). This has been achieved not only by refining the combined-attack strategy and increasing the number of systems involved but also by deploying a new type of drone, the Geran-3 / Shahed-238. Ukraine, for its part, has developed a strategy of targeting Russian industrial infrastructure, particularly refineries and fuel storage and transport facilities. The first waves of these strikes took place early in the year but were then paused under pressure from the United States. They resumed in July and escalated into a major offensive in August (→ Re:Russia: Summer Infrastructure Offensive). In September, the intensity of the attacks remained at August levels, and visible signs of a petrol crisis began to appear in Russia. The shortage is estimated at around 400,000 tonnes (out of 2 million), or about 20%, according to Kommersant sources, prompting the government to develop urgent countermeasures. The effectiveness of this strategy may increase further in the near future, as The Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump has authorised the use of American intelligence data for Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

Ukraine’s intensification of its drone war against Russian infrastructure in the second half of the year was made possible by another breakthrough in drone technology. As of August, the AFU had several strike drone models in service, including the An-196 Liutyi, FP-1, as well as the UJ-26 Beaver, AQ-400 Kosa, and others, according to renowned missile technology expert Fabian Hoffmann.

The An-196 Lyuty, developed by Ukroboronprom in 2023, played the main role in the first phase. According to sources at Ukrainska Pravda involved in developing the 'oil war' strategy (which they bluntly call '#f***theoil'), the Liutyi accounted for up to 80% of successful strikes on Russian targets in 2024, including attacks on the Novolipetsk steelworks and refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and Tatarstan. The Liutyi can carry around 75 kg of explosives, has a range of 1,000 km, is equipped with an autonomous navigation system, can adjust altitude according to terrain, and allows trajectory corrections by the operator. Its cost is about $200,000, which is comparable to that of the Russian Shahed-136.

However, this year’s breakthrough in the drone war is largely linked to the use of the new long-range FP-1 drone, which now accounts for around 60% of Ukrainian strikes on targets inside Russia, wrote Ukrainian military analyst Olena Kryzhanivska in August. Made of plywood, the FP-1 is lighter than the Russian Shahed, which uses carbon fibre, notes Ukrainian outlet Defence Express. TAs a result, the Shahed requires a more powerful four-cylinder engine, whereas the FP-1 only needs a two-cylinder one. The FP-1 carries a warhead of up to 120 kg (compared to the Shahed-136’s 90 kg) and has a range of up to 1,600 km (versus the Shahed-136’s estimated 1,000 km, according to RUSI experts. Irina Terekh, technical director of the startup Fire Point, which developed the drone, told the Associated Press that its cost is just about $55,000. Ukraine is currently producing up to 3,000 FP-1 drones per month, Defence Express reports.

A drone race instead of a shell race

One of the main issues in the first year of the war was the shortage of artillery shells. 'Shoigu, where are the shells?' shouted the now-deceased founder of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, at the then Russian defence minister. European and American militaries were frantically auditing stockpiles and exploring options for expanding production. Now, almost no one talks about shells. Instead, the drone race has gathered pace, and both sides are acutely aware of their critical dependence on its outcome.

In July 2022 the Ukrainian government launched the ‘Drone Army’ strategy to accelerate the development of the country’s drone industry, and a year later it launched the Brave1 initiative, under which more than 1,500 defence-tech companies received over $8 million in support. At the start of 2025 about 500 UAV manufacturers were operating in Ukraine, compared with seven three years earlier. Production of various types of drones in Ukraine rose from 600,000 in 2023 to 2.2 million in 2024, according to a recent review of the Ukrainian drone industry. By the end of 2025 it could reach 4 million, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. A further roughly 1 million drones is expected from the so‑called Drone Coalition (formed in early 2024 and comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Turkey and a number of European states that have agreed to organise and fund the provision of UAVs to Ukraine).

However, Atlantic Council expert Mark Andrijanič believes these 5 million UAVs would be only half the number required to shift the balance of forces on the battlefield in Ukraine’s favour. At an annual production rate of 10 million systems, Ukraine would be able to suppress Russian air defences effectively and disrupt Russian supply lines faster than Moscow could repair them, he argues. Technically, Ukraine is capable of producing such quantities. According to the Technological Forces of Ukraine association, which brings together leading private manufacturers in the field of high military technology, in 2024 Ukrainian electronic-warfare and drone manufacturers were operating at only 37 per cent capacity due to a lack of state contracts. But Andrijanič says that doubling UAV production would require allied investment of around €10 billion over two years.

Russia’s strike-drone development programme is also advancing. The aerial-platform manufacturing sub-sector is today the fastest-growing area of Russian industry (→ Re:Russia: Drones Against Recession). European military analysts estimate Russia is now producing roughly 2,700 Shaheds and 2,500 decoy drones per month, allowing it to launch up to 400 drones in a single night. Russia has also driven down production costs substantially: whereas at the start of the war one Shahed‑138 cost Russia an average of $200,000, in 2025 the cost is said to be around $70,000, according to sources in Ukrainian military intelligence. With the commissioning of new production facilities and launch sites, Russia will soon be able to launch 1,000–2,000 strike drones in a single attack, a development that would pose a very serious challenge to Ukrainian defences.

Yet the principal innovative focus today is shifting from producing ever better and cheaper drones to finding ways to defend against them. All the world’s militaries and defence industries are preoccupied with this problem. In any case, the drone-technology contest is precisely that: a race. The parties instantly ‘borrow’ technological solutions from one another and copy them. Rapid and effective introduction of innovations into mass production is therefore absolutely critical.

Beyond drones: from ‘stings’ to deterrence

How effective Ukraine’s strategy of attacking Russian industrial infrastructure will ultimately be remains unclear. But Ukraine’s strike capability will in any case remain limited so long as it consists solely of unmanned systems. Although drones are the main factor shifting the balance of power for the time being, in the longer term that balance will depend on a combination of drone and missile systems. It seems likely that Ukraine will only reach a new level by developing a strategy of combined strikes similar to those Russia carries out regularly. The issue therefore comes down to establishing domestic missile production in Ukraine, which would avoid the need to use Western weapons for strikes on Russian territory.

For a long time Ukraine’s missile programme stagnated, Fabian Hoffmann notes. This was caused by attempts to rely on ‘the baggage of the past’, that is, Soviet developments. Obstacles included the lack of components produced in Russia and the vulnerability of Ukrainian plants to Russian strikes. By the end of last year, however, Ukraine had made progress in producing a significant number of small cruise missiles, including the Ruta (range 300 km, top speed 800 km/h) and Peklo (range 700 km, top speed 700 km/h).

A fundamentally new development is the heavy cruise missile FP‑5 Flamingo, unveiled in August by the same start‑up Fire Point that developed the FP‑1 drone. Capable of speeds up to 950 km/h, with a weight of 6,000 kg and a payload of 1,150 kg, it would become the first heavy missile system in Ukraine’s indigenous arsenal. Its stated range (3,000 km) would put almost the whole of European Russia potentially within reach. As we have written previously, if serial production can be established, possession of missiles with such characteristics would by itself alter the balance of power in the war and provide a powerful deterrent to Russian aggression both now and in the future (→ Re:Russia: The Spoils of An Unreliable Alliance). Hoffmann believes a stable monthly output of 30–50 such missiles would have a noticeable impact on the course of the war, and an arsenal of 2,000–4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles would convince Moscow that renewed aggression against Ukraine would be pointless.

Fire Point initially claimed it produced about 30 Flamingo missiles per month, by the end of September, it said that it was already producing 50, and by the end of the year it promised to increase production sevenfold, which would allow annual production of more than 2,500 missiles. Unconfirmed Ukrainian media reports suggest the missile may have been used for the first time on 30 August, possibly striking a target in Crimea.

Hoffmann admits that current estimates of FP‑5 production may be overstated. A bottleneck for the project is the turbofan engine used in the missile, which is manufactured only at the Motor Sich plant. Scaling up production is also difficult because of ongoing hostilities: the facilities required for manufacture and storage occupy large areas, making them vulnerable to Russian missile strikes and sabotage.

Even after the war ends, a major challenge for Ukraine will be finding a solution for the secure storage of missiles while simultaneously organising procedures to launch them at short notice. Finally, the programme has also been hit by allegations that Fire Point inflated prices and supplied inaccurate data on delivery volumes (at the end of August the Kyiv Independent, citing five informed sources, reported an investigation initiated against the company by the National Anti‑Corruption Bureau of Ukraine; the Bureau itself, however, denied these allegations).

But if all these problems are resolved and Ukraine’s missile programme gains momentum, then as early as next year Ukraine could expand its capabilities and take a decisive step towards becoming a genuine military power – one whose defeat could only be achieved at the cost of substantial and almost unacceptable losses for the aggressor.