The current Russia-Ukraine war of attrition has fallen into a humiliating deadlock marked by mutual exhaustion. The greatest challenge facing Russia lies in the fact that its sole external ally, North Korea, is unable to provide full-scale support. Recent large-scale air raids launched by Russian forces against Kyiv have exposed the missile and air defense dilemmas confronting both sides.
This time, Russian forces deployed a large number of missiles and drones, including various types such as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Ukraine's air defense forces leveraged their existing equipment to intercept the majority of drones and cruise missiles. However, all of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia successfully penetrated Ukrainian defenses, evading interception and delivering effective strikes on Kyiv.
The core reason behind this situation is that Ukraine's high-end air defense ammunition is nearly depleted. Currently, the only system capable of effectively intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles—the Patriot PAC-3 MSE—faces a severe shortage of ammunition.
Due to insufficient production capacity in Europe and the United States, coupled with tight global stockpiles, Western nations cannot continuously replenish Ukraine’s interceptor missiles. As a result, Ukraine’s air defense system now suffers from a critical vulnerability, leaving it almost wide open to ballistic missile attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s missile reserves are far from as abundant as commonly believed. According to the latest intelligence assessment by Ukrainian forces, the total available inventory of operational ballistic missiles in the Russian military is extremely limited, comprising domestically produced conventional ballistic missiles, a small number of discontinued advanced warheads, and a batch of missiles provided by North Korea. Overall, this reserve size even falls short of that held by some military powers in the Middle East.
Russia can only rely on routinely mass-produced conventional missiles to maintain basic pressure in its strikes. However, many of these missiles suffer from significant accuracy shortcomings, enabling only broad-area area-effect damage, with insufficient precision for targeted strikes. At the same time, due to its own defense needs and production constraints, North Korea will not fully commit its national resources to support Russia, providing only a limited amount of emergency munitions that cannot sustain continuous missile supply for Russian forces.
To address the dire air defense crisis, Ukraine has joined forces with multiple Western countries to launch an emergency remediation plan. The core strategy involves refurbishing and upgrading Soviet-era S-300 air defense systems. By repairing aging missile bodies, replacing them with advanced Western guidance heads, and achieving localization of key components, these outdated air defense systems are being restored to combat readiness. It is expected that basic operational capability will be achieved within the year, followed by large-scale production to replenish air defense munitions. Meanwhile, several European countries are collaborating with Ukraine to develop a new generation of air defense systems, designed to be low-cost and high-volume, serving as a strong complement to the high-end Patriot air defense systems.
At present, the Russia-Ukraine conflict stands as a true "mutual scarcity" confrontation of attrition. Ukraine’s S-300 modernization plan is merely a temporary solution; the real turning point hinges on the speed of Western Patriot missile resupply. Likewise, Russia must carefully plan the use of its limited ballistic missile stocks to avoid wasteful consumption. This deadlock is unlikely to be broken in the short term.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1874367632684043/
Disclaimer: This article represents the personal views of the author.