“Russia has taught its missiles to swerve past Ukraine’s best defenses in their final seconds — and they’re getting through”

Russia has modified its ballistic missiles to dive and maneuver in the terminal phase, evading Ukraine’s interceptors, a shift one Ukrainian official calls a ‘game-changer.’ After one of the war’s largest ballistic barrages on Kyiv, and with a global interceptor shortage biting, Ukraine’s home-built defenses remain years away, ‘19fortyfive’ stresses.

The current acting prime minister stated it was actually the largest attack ever, but the Ukraine Air Force (PSU) stated there had been slightly larger combined totals of missiles and drones fired against the country in the past.

The main target, as usual, was the capital Kyiv.

Andriy Sybiha, who is currently the acting minister of foreign affairs, said Russia had launched “around four dozen” missiles.

These missiles have been modified so that, in the terminal phase, they descend on a ballistic trajectory to complicate interception. He called it the “largest number of ballistic missiles since the start of the war.”

Modifying trajectories

The number of missile intercepts in this war has created a volume of data on the performance of defense systems like the US-made Patriot that exceeds that extracted from all other previous conflicts combined.

Russia’s missile designers have exploited as much of that data as they have collected as possible and are modifying these weapons so that they can evade the Patriot and other missile defense platforms.

What their modifications have done is alter ballistic missile control systems so that they do not travel on a predictable trajectory per their original design, according to a report from October 2025.

According to the available data, Russia’s missile forces have been devising methods that cause these missiles to depart from their normal descent aspect as they approach their targets.

Those Russian missiles then dive at steep angles or make rapid maneuvers that “confuse and avoid” the Patriot system’s interceptors.

One Ukrainian official called these modifications a “game-changer for Russia.” At the time of the October 2025 report, four Russian Iskander-M missiles were fired, and all four hit their targets due to these modifications.

Russian Defense Ministry claimed that it had carried out a “massive strike” and used the standard line that these were attacks on Ukrainian “defense industry facilities and logistics centers in the city of Kyiv.”

What will continue to be a problem for Ukraine, however, is a global shortage of interceptor missiles. There is unlikely to be any dramatic increase in the deliveries of these weapons – particularly those missiles used in the Patriot batteries – according to a long discussion on the daily Ukraine war podcast produced by the London Daily Telegraph.

The other bit of unhappy news is that while promises have been made to provide the blueprints that would permit Ukraine to manufacture its own Patriot interceptors, there are still numerous details to be clarified and it is also unclear which model of the several fired by the US-made platform’s missile will be produced locally in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s air defense forces should also not expect that production line to kick off anytime soon.

Most of the estimates to date are that it could be two years or more before any of these interceptors roll out of a factory in Kyiv. By that time, the war is likely to be over.

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