All-robot amphibious landings, air assaults, engineering operations, and resupply are increasingly commonplace in Russia's wider war on Ukraine, now in its 57th month. They're especially common on the Ukrainian side as Kyiv rushes to reinforce its manpower-starved armed forces with unmanned systems of all kinds.

One recent all-robot assault carried out by the Ukrainian 3rd Assault Brigade on or just before 30 October stood out, however. It was the biggest confirmed attack by unmanned ground vehicles so far in the wider war: no fewer than 28 UGVs of all kinds rolled across the gray zone near the village of Druzheliubivka in northern Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast.

It seems the Russians spotted the assault from far away and swiftly defeated it, mostly by sending in explosive first-person-view drones. But it could be a temporary win. UGVs are cheap, some costing a few tens of thousands of dollars, and Ukraine is building a lot of them. Former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov claimed Ukraine would acquire 25,000 UGVs in just the first six months of 2026. The figure for the rest of the year is likely to be as high or higher.

Those 28 Ukrainian UGVs may have failed to breach Russian positions. The next 28 might succeed.

The daylight all-robot ground assault, which came around two years after the first-ever all-robot ground assault and four months after the first all-robot amphibious landing and air assault (all carried out by the Ukrainians), reportedly involved eight self-exploding UGVs plus another 20 UGVs with handheld weapons: 18 with pairs of single-round grenade launchers and two with automatic grenade launchers firing more but smaller rounds.

The Russians posted a video montage depicting FPV attacks on the approaching Ukrainian UGVs. If any of the Ukrainian robots got close enough to Russian positions to directly engage, it's not apparent from the video.

Russian military channels claim that Russian FPV drone operators repelled an attempted Ukrainian ground robotic systems assault involving 28 unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).

According to these reports, the Ukrainian force consisted of eight kamikaze ground robots, two platforms… pic.twitter.com/q3FIYj1NYY

— Drone Wars (@Drone_Wars_) November 5, 2026

The Ukrainian plan seemingly failed. But that doesn't mean it was an unsound plan. Examples abound of recent, but smaller, all-robot or robot-led ground operations. Aerial drones and ground robots led the way in the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps' successful Operation Vivaldi counteroffensive, which ejected a pair of Russian field armies from a critical sector of eastern Ukraine's northern Donetsk Oblast starting in March.

For Operation Vivaldi, the 3rd Army Corps deployed mine-clearing ground robots and remote-controlled BTR-60 armored personnel carriers converted into powerful rolling bombs. Even more dramatically, the corps and its supporting drone units organized all-robot air assaults. Heavy octocopter bomber drones carried armed UGVs across the gray zone and deposited them right in front of or right behind Russian positions.

Precious manpower

Operation Vivaldi's robot operations succeeded where the recent 28-UGV assault apparently failed. The occasional defeat belies the frequent victories. In any event, Ukrainian forces are going all-in on robots because they have no other choice. Short tens of thousands of trained infantry, the Ukrainian ground forces struggle to fully man all 150 of their line brigades.

Robots are the obvious solution. “Fighting against a much bigger power, Ukraine throughout the war has needed to leverage technology to be able to fight back and take the fight to Russia,” war correspondent David Kirichenko told Euromaidan Press.

But replacing people with robots is easier said than done. The robot itself is just the visible part of a complex system. The radio networks and other systems connecting the robots to their distant operators are just as important as the robots themselves.

Every control system the Ukrainians use has advantages and disadvantages. The wireless systems, including satellite, line-of-sight, and mesh radios, are subject to Russian jamming and, in the case of Starlink and Starshield, also subject to throttling by trillionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX. It's possible to connect a UGV to its operator via a kilometers-long spool of optical fiber, but the fiber tends to get caught on trees and rocks and break.

Given how fragile any single system can be, the Ukrainians have learned to install multiple command systems on every UGV. Backups for the backups. When you see 28 armed robots roll into battle, the machines aren't the impressive part. The command systems are what matter most.

It's Ukraine's mastery of these command systems that guarantees more all-robot assaults are coming.

The Ukrainian army's 100th Mechanized Brigade holds positions in or around Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, which straddles the H20 highway threading between the ruins of Kostiantynivka northwest through Druzhkivka toward Kramatorsk, one of the last two big free cities in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

This axis is arguably the locus of the most intensive fighting in Ukraine right now as the Russians throw troops and vehicles at Ukrainian defenses in the hope of breaking through to Kramatorsk and neighboring Sloviansk from the south. It should come as no surprise that the H20 and adjacent roads are choked with the burned-out husks of Russian and Ukrainian vehicles.

It's a problem, and the 100th Mechanized Brigade is solving it with sheer brute force. The brigade has attached a dozer blade to one of its drone-proofed armored vehicles, and is deploying the vehicle as a combat bulldozer. The dozer "push[es] the most difficult obstacle from the road and clears the way for other equipment," the 100th Mechanized Brigade stated.

An armored combat vehicle from the 100th Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, converted into a bulldozer for clearing roads of damaged ground drones and vehicles. pic.twitter.com/m2L9pLFzh3

— MAKS 26 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) November 4, 2026

Danger is constant. The same drones that littered the roads with destroyed vehicles also threaten the engineers whose job it is to clear the scorched hulks.

The 100th Mechanized Brigade is proud of its road-clearing engineers. It recently posted a drone video depicting the dozer in action in Druzhkivka, motoring out from under the partial protection of overhead anti-drone netting to shove destroyed vehicles off the H20.

The 100th, like many Ukrainian mechanized brigades, has an engineer battalion that supports its infantry and tank battalions. The engineers ride in an array of specialized vehicles for digging trenches, clearing earthen obstacles and mines, and towing damaged vehicles. And they can also convert practically any armored vehicle into a do-it-yourself combat engineer vehicle, or CEV, by attaching a dozer blade, like the one made by U.K. firm Pearson Engineering.

Pearson's General Purpose Blade "is suitable for clearing obstacles, urban roadblocks and rubble and it can also be used to move earth and fill craters," the company explained.

It's hard to say on the basis of one grainy drone video what kind of vehicle the 100th Mechanized Brigade fitted with a dozer blade for road-clearing duty. The brigade rides in Marder and M-2 infantry fighting vehicles, YPR-765 armored personnel carriers, and T-64, T-72, and T-80 tanks, among other types.

Special vehicles

If the unit has specialized CEVs, it's unclear what kind. The most common CEVs in Ukrainian service include the German Wisent and the Soviet IMR-2. The Ukrainians received a number of newer CEVs in the lead-up to their failed 2023 counteroffensive, including American Assault Breachers and Finnish Leopard 2Rs. But these vehicles suffered heavy losses while trying to lead tanks and fighting vehicles across dense Russian minefields. It seems no Assault Breachers or Leopard 2Rs are left in Ukrainian service.

Combat engineer vehicles, whether purpose-made or improvised, are in high demand on both sides of Russia's wider war on Ukraine. To take some of the pressure off, and safeguard human crews, the Ukrainians in particular are migrating some of the traditional tasks of a CEV to unmanned systems.

These capabilities were dramatically on display when the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps launched Operation Vivaldi, its ultimately successful effort to push back a pair of Russian field armies along the northern approach to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, back in the spring.

Where before, engineering vehicles may have cleared the Russian minefields, the 3rd Army Corps sent in heavy ground robots equipped with mine-clearing metal flails. Other Ukrainian units have experimented with aerial drones as de facto route-clearance systems. Heavy bomber drones have flown ahead of vehicle columns, dropping grenades to clear Russian ambush drones that sit on the road, waiting to take off and ambush passing vehicles.

But no aerial drone can shove a multi-ton wreck off a road. And while remote-controlled heavy vehicles may eventually be up to the task, they're still fairly rare in the Ukrainian inventory. So for now, it takes a crewed bulldozer to scrape wreckage off the most important roads faster than drone strikes can add to the wreckage.

Relentlessly droning Russian troops and vehicles just west of Huliaipole in southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the Ukrainian 237th Unmanned Systems Battalion isn't just blocking a Russian offensive. It's also working out a possible new anti-vehicle tactic.

A video montage of the battalion's work, published on 30 October, depicts recent drone strikes on trucks, armored vehicles, and artillery. Most of the depicted strikes involve the usual first-person-view drones. But a few involve much heavier fixed-wing drones.

That's unusual. Ukrainian units usually reserve their fixed-wing drones, including Fire Point FP-1s and FP-2s, for deep strike hundreds of kilometers behind the disputed gray zone. When the FP-1/2s and similar drones strike closer to the gray zone, it's usually for so-called "middle strikes" on Russian supply lines.

Fixed-wing drones aren't normally involved in strikes on individual armored vehicles, and for one main reason: cost. An FP-1 or FP-2 might cost $50,000. After all, these drones weigh hundreds of kilograms, pack warheads as heavy as 158 kg, and range hundreds of kilometers. By contrast, the tiny FPV drones that carry out most of the strikes on Russian infantry and assault vehicles in and around the gray zone weigh just a couple of kilograms, half of which might be warhead, and cost just $500 apiece.

In other words, the more expensive fixed-wing drones are for precise, destructive strikes on high-value targets well behind the gray zone. The cheaper FPV drones are for hounding hapless individual Russian infantry and vehicle crews as they struggle toward or across the gray zone. Expensive drone for expensive target. Cheap drone for cheap target.

Мінус ворожа бронетехніка, артилерія та транспорт

Пілоти 237 Окремий Батальйон Безпілотних Систем «Apachi» 7 корпусу ДШВ продовжують знищувати техніку та особовий склад російських військ на Гуляйпільському напрямку. pic.twitter.com/rFchSe4dp0

— Ілля Айзін (@ayzin_illya) October 30, 2026

Tougher vehicles

But there's a problem. Heaping layers of anti-drone armor on their assault vehicles, the Russians have produced whole classes of vehicle that are highly resistant to FPV strikes. Metal cages, plates, mesh, and spines can trigger FPVs' warheads a safe distance from a vehicle's hull. Some of these turtle, hedgehog, and porcupine vehicles have absorbed dozens of FPV strikes before succumbing.

The drone strike math is changing. If it takes dozens of $500 drones to maybe take out an up-armored vehicle, it might be cost-effective to swap in a single fixed-wing drone, instead—and virtually guarantee that a single hit will result in a catastrophic kill. A hedgehog vehicle might survive repeated near-misses by FPVs with their 1-kg warheads. No vehicle survives a direct hit by an FP-2 packing a 158-kg warhead.

It's possible the 237th Unmanned Systems Battalion is poised to make the switch. And the tactic could spread as Ukrainian industry churns out more and more fixed-wing drones and Russians up-armor more and more vehicles. It's possible the new drone tactic and the new anti-drone vehicles will soon meet on a larger scale. "If Russia ever dares to return to armored assaults, I predict one [Ukrainian] adaptation will be to middle-strike the crap out of these with the large fixed wings that have a substantially larger warhead compared to FPVs," observer Moklasen wrote.

For now, it's enough for the 237th Unmanned Systems Battalion to keep up the pressure on the Russian 127th Motor Rifle Division and adjacent units across the gray zone west of Huliaipole. Last year, the Russians achieved some of their most dramatic victories along this axis as they pushed outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian defenders west toward Zaporizhzhia City.

Back in February, the Ukrainians reinforced—and struck back. Aided by the abrupt bricking of Russia's thousands of smuggled and stolen Starlink satellite terminals, a clutch of Ukrainian assault and air assault brigades counterattacked, swiftly erasing months of Russian gains. Now the Ukrainians west of Huliaipole have one job: hold the line.

They're doing just that. "In 2026, the Ukrainian army has succeeded in stabilizing the southern front, reclaiming more territory than it has lost," mapper Clément Molin wrote. "The Russian army is continuing its offensive from Huliaipole along a 30-km-wide front, though its rate of advance remains limited."

It may remain limited, in part, because the Ukrainians are aiming heavier drones at the few armored vehicles the Russians dare to send across the gray zone. Smashed by warheads weighing tens of kilograms or more, the vehicles don't get very far.

Desperately short of long-range surface-to-air missiles and with no easy way to fill the gap, Ukraine is at the mercy of Russia's ballistic missiles as the weather grows colder and reliable access to electricity and heat becomes a matter of life and death for millions of Ukrainians.

All that is to say, the coming winter "will likely be the hardest" since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, according to German missile expert Fabian Hoffmann and his co-writer, Kyiv-based analyst Anastasiia Lapatina.

It's not just that Ukraine is effectively out of its best air defense missiles. At the same time, Russia has diversified its own stocks of land-attack missiles and increased the supply.

More Russian offensive missiles. Fewer Ukrainian defensive missiles. "We don’t know exactly how difficult the coming months will be for Ukraine, but forecasts look bleak," Hoffmann and Lapatina wrote. "Russia, it appears, is determined to make living in Ukraine as difficult as possible for the civilian population."

The crisis has loomed for months. In February, the United States launched a war of choice on Iran. As Iran fired back with ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones, the United States, Israel, and various Persian Gulf countries began launching Patriot surface-to-air missiles at an unsustainable rate.

Before the war on Iran, US forces had around 2,300 PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles for their Patriot batteries. Just two months into the war, the Americans had fired no fewer than half of the multi-million-dollar missiles, which are some of the only air defense munitions that can swat down cruise missiles, drones, and ballistic missiles.

Missile-maker Lockheed Martin is ramping up Patriot missile production from just 600 missiles annually to 2,000, but the expansion takes time. And even with more components, more factory space and more workers, there's the problem of time. It takes nearly four years from payment for Lockheed to deliver a PAC-2 or PAC-3.

Too few missiles

For Ukraine, that's a problem. The Ukrainian air force has around eight Patriot batteries, each capable of hitting all but the most powerful Russian munitions. The only missile Russia had fired at Ukraine that the Patriot can't intercept is the heavy Oreshnik, a non-nuclear version of an intermediate-range nuclear missile.

By October, Ukraine's Patriot batteries were out of missiles as often as they weren't. Ukraine's European allies were clinging to their own Patriot missile stocks, and the Pentagon was prioritizing its own Patriot batteries and those of America's Gulf allies for any new missiles rolling off the Lockheed production line.

On 31 October, the US State Department approved the sale of 500 new PAC-3 missiles to Ukraine under a $2.1-billion deal financed by Ukraine's European allies. But the first of the missiles isn't expected to arrive in Ukraine for several years. Far too late to save Ukraine from not just one hard winter, but potentially two or three.

Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was aghast. "Five hundred PAC-3 interceptors is a substantial number, and very soon—this winter—they COULD make for a highly effective defense package. However, it has been stipulated that deliveries may begin ONLY IN A FEW YEARS,” Zelenskyy wrote.

"The United States, our European partners and other partners around the world have sufficient stocks of PAC-3 interceptors in their warehouses," Zelenskyy insisted. "Providing them to Ukraine right now—in the winter of 2026–2027—and replenishing our partners’ arsenals LATER, in THE FOLLOWING YEARS, through this production already contracted and paid for by Ukraine and our partners would be the right approach."

"And it is entirely feasible," Zelenskyy stressed.

But the increasingly Russia-friendly administration of US Pres. Donald Trump hasn't signaled any willingness to prioritize missile deliveries to Ukraine. And some key European countries, namely Greece and Spain, have declined to give away missiles they claim are necessary for their own self-defense.

Time is running out for Ukraine to find some defenses against the coming winter barrages. Yes, Ukrainian forces can step up their strikes on Russian bomber bases and missile factories, suppressing the aircraft that launch some missiles and the industrial base that keeps fresh missiles flowing to front-line forces.

But deep strikes are no panacea. Point defenses still matter—a lot. And in Ukraine, these defenses are failing. According to Zelenskyy, a steady supply of 100 Patriots a month for five months "would be enough to protect our skies."

It's not clear that's actually true, however. Russia launched around 150 ballistic missiles at Ukraine in October, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 11 of them, or about 7%. And by tapping stockpiles and sustaining elevated production rates, Russia "could plausibly launch between 360 and 440 ballistic missiles at Ukraine over the next four months," Hoffmann and Lapatina wrote.

"S-400 surface-to-air missiles fired in ground-attack mode will likely add another 60 to 200 ballistic missile projectiles," the analysts added. "Although less accurate and powerful, these weapons still pose a threat to human life and Ukraine’s infrastructure. Russia’s 3M22 Zircon aeroballistic missiles, which continue to be produced in small albeit steady quantities, could add another five to 15 ballistic missiles per month."

Altogether, Ukraine "could face an average of 130 to 190 ballistic missile projectiles per month" through the winter of 2026–2027, the analysts estimated, up from around 150 in October. Ukraine's military intelligence said this week that Russia holds up to 700 ballistic missiles and can build up to 110 a month. If no additional Patriots arrive, and soon, it's likely many of those missiles will strike their targets, including the power plants Ukrainians depend on to stave off the lethal winter cold.

With significant fresh Patriot deliveries potentially years away, Ukraine is scrambling for alternatives. The air force has two Franco-Italian SAMP/T batteries that can also hit incoming ballistic missiles, but it's possible MBDA builds at most a few hundred Aster missiles for the SAMP/T every year. Few of the Asters end up in Ukraine.

Ukraine is developing its own long-range surface-to-air missile with anti-ballistic capability under the Freyja initiative. But while Ukrainian industry can produce the missile bodies and propellant, it relies on European industry for seekers, ground radars, command systems, and integration.

According to Ukrainian missile-maker Fire Point, the Ukrainian share of Freyja is ready. The European share ... isn't.

In four months of deft maneuver, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps cleared Russian troops from 277 sq km of northern Donetsk Oblast, inflicting—according to the corps—8,000 casualties on the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies and chasing the armies back across a key terrain feature, the Zherebets River.

There are many reasons for the success of the 3rd Army Corps' Operation Vivaldi—which the corps declared finished on 19 October, though elements reportedly keep pushing across the Zherebets to the river's eastern bank.

But one reason is becoming clearer. Bucking a worrying trend, the 3rd Army Corps under its former commander Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi actually managed to nearly fill out at least one of its five line brigades. The 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade's main units—three infantry and tank battalions, which make up around half the overall brigade—have filled between 95% and 100% of their allotted billets, the brigade says.

That means the brigade rolls into battle with as many as 1,500 infantry and vehicle crew. (A battalion typically has around 500 personnel.)

That's highly unusual. Almost all of the roughly 150 ground combat brigades in the Ukrainian armed forces have too few infantry. “Ukraine faces manpower shortage and still does not have a single brigade that is fully manned,” analyst Giorgi Revishvili wrote in June. Some brigades are effectively battalions given their stubbornly low manning.

The 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade—commanded by Maj. Volodymyr Fokin—may be one exception to that truism. And if you believe the brigade's own claims, the unit not only has nearly all of its allotted infantry, it also has an abundance of heavy equipment including American-made M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German-made Leopard tanks. (It's unclear whether they're Leopard 1s or heavier Leopard 2s.) The 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade's line battalions should possess around 90 armored vehicles between them.

"3rd Army Corps is built different," observer Moklasen quipped. The corps grew out of the 3rd Assault Brigade, whose soldiers described it as a new army modeled on the freedom-loving Cossacks rather than on the regulations.

Turnaround

The brigade wasn't always so fit. Indeed, as recently as a year ago it was just 17% manned and lacked heavy equipment, the brigade says, making it more typical of the younger Ukrainian brigades including the notoriously "poor" 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade.

The 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade stood up in 2022 as a lightly equipped territorial defense brigade, transferred to the army in 2024 as a mechanized brigade and thereafter underwent reorganization to the new vehicle-centric heavy mechanized structure.

But it took Fokin's strong leadership to actually fill out that structure, the brigade stated. Fokin and his staff "started changing things instead of looking for excuses," according to the brigade's official Telegram account.

"Within just one year, the unit has risen to the top ranks in terms of enemy attrition, mine-laying, artillery operations, air defense, unmanned ground systems, and reconnaissance. Among heavy mechanized brigades, it has held the top spot for three consecutive months."

Success bred success. Increasingly confident in the 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade's leadership, some 1,500 troops who had gone absent without leave returned and rejoined the fight, according to the brigade. That helped drive a 430% increase in unit manning, by the brigade's count, until its main units were essentially fully manned.

"The unit no longer fights with unarmed personnel," the 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade reported. "Today, the brigade is active and conducting successful offensive operations. Its arsenal ranges from unmanned systems, unmanned ground vehicles and electronic warfare assets to armored personnel carriers, armored combat vehicles and artillery. It also boasts high-quality medical support, robust rear-echelon logistics, and a cadre of professional commanders."

Brigade troopers and their vehicles and drones underwent a baptism of fire as part of Operation Vivaldi. Robots led the way, but armored vehicles and infantry followed. The 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade and the other assault and mechanized brigades under the 3rd Army Corps banner advanced steadily, exploiting gaps in the overextended 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies and pushing back the bigger Russian formations.

"Operating as part of the corps, our units are once again liberating Ukrainian territory, safeguarding their personnel and continuing to evolve," the 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade stated. Its success, the brigade says, began with strong leadership that inspired confidence in its rank-and-file soldiers—and motivated them to stay and fight.

The shortfall in infantry, above all, is arguably why Ukraine has built its way of war around drones and ground robots.

The trickle of old and new vehicles slowly filling out the ranks of the Ukrainian army's newly formed 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade is a worrying reminder that Ukraine, despite its recent successes on the battlefield, is still struggling to fully equip its ground combat brigades.

The factors are myriad. Foreign donations of surplus equipment have slowed. Ukraine purchases some new equipment on its own but relies on foreign financing for the rest. Sometimes the financing is slow to come together; sometimes the manufacturer is slow to deliver.

Meanwhile, losses on the battlefield—and losses to accidents and wear and tear—relentlessly pile up. In that sense, Ukraine's equipment losses mirror its human losses. Bleeding people and machines, the Ukrainian armed forces can't quite keep all their combat formations fully staffed and fully mechanized.

Case in point: the Ukrainian army's 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade. Observer Stevius has closely tracked the "poor" brigade as it has inducted whatever vehicles the army can scrounge for the unit's front-line battalions. The skeletal brigade stood up last year but still isn't ready for action.

Stevius has noted, in service with the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade: BTR-60 and M-113 armored personnel carriers with their roots in the 1960s; T-72B, T-72EA, and T-72AV tanks originally built in the 1970s plus a few somewhat newer T-64BV tanks; and, finally, factory-fresh 2S22 howitzers.

The tanks in particular represent "a fairly heterogeneous mix," Stevius wrote. The brigade is piecing together a single tank battalion, which should have 31 tanks at full strength, with whatever unassigned tanks are lying around.

Eclectic mix

If there were 31 free T-72Bs—or 31 free T-72EAs and T-72AVs or T-64BVs—the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade would surely use just one tank model, thus simplifying training and maintenance. But there apparently aren't 31 free tanks of any of the four types. The brigade has no choice but to mix and match as it adds fighting hardware.

The issue is endemic. According to the open-source tracker Oryx, which counts only losses it can see in photos and videos, the Ukrainians have lost nearly 1,500 tanks and around 6,900 other armored vehicles. After those losses, the Ukrainians can't fully equip every armored, mechanized, and motorized battalion with the 31 vehicles it's supposed to have.

Exactly how big the vehicle shortage is can be hard to assess. Before the wider war kicked off nearly five years ago, the Ukrainians had at least 3,200 tanks and other armored vehicles, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. And we know how many vehicles Ukraine's allies have delivered: around 15,000. Let's assume the Ukrainians have also pulled, from long-term storage, as many vehicles as they had in active use in 2022.

Ukraine's tanks and other armored vehicles	Roughly
In service before the full-scale invasion	3,200
Pulled from storage (assumed: as many again)	3,200
Delivered by allies	15,000
Lost (visually confirmed only)	−8,340
Left	13,000
Needed: 150 brigades × at least 120 vehicles	18,000

Around 13,000 tanks and other armored vehicles should be enough to equip each of around 150 ground combat brigades with around 90 vehicles. That's three battalions' worth. But most brigades have four or more tank, mechanized, and motorized battalions requiring at least 120 vehicles.

Worse, we can assume Ukrainian losses are higher than analysts have visually tallied. And we can also assume many vehicles have escaped battle damage but worn out from overuse. All that is to say, it wouldn't be shocking if there are Ukrainian brigades out there with fewer than 50 armored vehicles. In vehicular terms, they're practically battalions, not brigades.

People are in short supply, too. It's unclear how many infantry the 29th Heavy Mechanized Brigade has, but it's safe to assume it has a lot of unfilled billets. "Ukraine faces manpower shortage and still does not have a single brigade that is fully manned," analyst Giorgi Revishvili wrote in June.

On paper, the Ukrainian armed forces should have a couple hundred thousand infantry. But amid uneven recruitment, public resistance to conscription, and heavy losses—the UALosses project has counted nearly 190,000 Ukrainian troops killed, missing, or captured since February 2022—most units are now chronically under-strength.

Ua losses updated their count, methodology and map on Ukrainian losses in the war, following KIA, MIA and POW

Ukrainian losses :
29k losses in 2022
31k losses in 2023
47k losses in 2024
51k losses in 2025
30k losses in 2026

The database is very useful : we have… pic.twitter.com/CR5vghYzol

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 28, 2026

Ukraine's infantry shortage is so deep and enduring that it's arguably the main driver of the Ukrainian ground forces' doctrine and technology—the reason, in other words, that Ukraine deploys drones and ground robots wherever possible. The same robots must also fill in for the thousands of armored vehicles that Ukraine needs, but simply doesn't have.

Ukraine and the Netherlands will collaborate on an air-defense project called "Bliksem," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced during his visit to the Netherlands on Wednesday, 28 October.

Zelenskyy didn't offer a lot of details. But if the Bliksem initiative he referenced on Wednesday is the same Bliksem initiative that a consortium of European companies launched this summer, then Ukraine could be in line to acquire one of the world's most powerful missile interceptors.

But not quickly. Nor cheaply.

The pan-European Bliksem project aims to develop a so-called "exo-atmospheric" interceptor. That is, a missile that can fly higher than 100 km—above Earth's atmosphere—in order to hit the most dangerous ballistic missiles during their mid-course phase of flight, before they tip back into the atmosphere and streak down toward their targets.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten met with the heads of Dutch and Ukrainian companies in the defense, energy, and software sectors, Zelenskyy said. "We defined key priorities and decisions that can strengthen our practical economic cooperation: defense production, joint technology and energy projects, industrial development, and, very importantly, satellite technologies and air defense," Zelenskyy said.

"Our teams have been tasked with working out a specific air defense project, Bliksem," Zelenskyy continued. "We have already started this work."

If the Dutch-Ukrainian Bliksem is the same as the wider European Bliksem, then it's an effort to develop a missile in the class of the American Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), as well as the US-Israeli Arrow 3. All three are exo-atmospheric.

Cued by radars and satellites and boosted 100 km into the sky, they punch right through the hazy Kármán line that delineates the border between the atmosphere and space.

Cold of space

Up there in the cold vacuum, the interceptors can see clearly with sensitive infrared seekers—and distinguish incoming ballistic missiles from any decoys the missiles may deploy. Thrusters maneuver the interceptors to directly impact incoming missiles, destroying them with kinetic energy rather than explosive warheads.

While Germany has a few Arrow 3s, most European powers lack exo-atmospheric interceptors. Their only option for shooting down the heaviest incoming ballistic missiles (such as Russia's intermediate-range Oreshnik) is to hit them in the final seconds of flight, when even a destroyed ballistic missile can cause damage by scattering supersonic debris.

To plug that air defense gap, this summer five European companies—Destinus, MBDA, Safran, Airbus, and Thales—signed a letter of intent to form the Bliksem EXO consortium. The goal: to test the interceptor's kill vehicle in space in 2027.

The companies signed in Paris at the first meeting of an anti-ballistic coalition that Ukraine launched with nine European countries, including the Netherlands, with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten present. They said the design would draw on Ukraine's experience against Russian missiles. The lead firm, Destinus, is Dutch. Given Zelenskyy's statement, it's possible Ukrainian firms will join the consortium itself.

If the timeline holds and any technology Bliksem EXO develops actually works, the result could be a new interceptor rivaling the THAAD, SM-3, and Arrow 3—and one unbound by American export restrictions. Europe could arm itself for mid-course missile defense. Ukraine could, too, significantly stiffen its missile defenses that are in a state of collapse owing to a deepening shortage of American-made Patriot missile interceptors.

Don't expect Bliksem to bear fruit quickly or cheaply. The THAAD, SM-3, and Arrow 3 interceptors each needed a decade or more to move through development to deployment. And leaving aside their multi-billion-dollar development costs, the missiles are expensive. A single THAAD interceptor costs $12 million. Even the Americans can't afford to stockpile more than a few hundred THAADs at a time.

A Bliksem interceptor could eventually—and at great cost—lend Ukrainian forces a capability they currently lack: an active defense against a big ballistic missile like the Russian Oreshnik.

Ukraine is also building its own anti-ballistic system, FREYJA, with European partners. Zelenskyy wrote on 21 October that officials had found ways to speed it up so it reaches testing by the end of this year.

But neither project will solve a much more urgent problem: how to shoot down the dozens of smaller ballistic missiles Russia has been launching at Ukrainian cities every month. Ukraine got only 24 Patriot interceptors from the US in three months and needs about 350 a month, Zelenskyy told ABC News on 23 October. Meanwhile, Russia produces 55–60 Iskanders a month, according to Ukrainian military intelligence.

To stop the ballistic barrage, Ukraine simply needs more Patriots—and soon.

Starting in May, Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps began exploiting gaps in Russian lines just north of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. Five months later, the corps and its supporting drone units had cleared Russian troops from 277 sq km of northern Donetsk, inflicting what the corps says were 8,000 Russian casualties and pushing the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies back across a key terrain feature: the Zherebets River.

On 14 October, the 3rd Army Corps declared victory in its Operation Vivaldi. "Four seasons of Vivaldi are over. But the music plays on," the corps wrote on Telegram.

It was unclear at the time what the corps meant. Its commander, Brig. Gen. Andrii Biletskyi, has since been seconded to lead Ukraine's new Center Group of Forces. But it's clearer now. According to at least two observers, Ukrainian troops have continued attacking along the Zherebets River—and have even crossed the river at several points.

If true and confirmed, the crossings could ratchet up the pressure on the battered Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies following their hasty and chaotic retreat from their former salient north of Sloviansk. The Zherebets should have been a natural defensive barrier for the Russians.

Sheltering on the river's eastern bank, the Russians could have rested, reset, and reinforced in preparation for a renewed offensive next year. But if the Ukrainians keep attacking, rest might be impossible. And that could force the Russians to rethink any plans for a fresh push toward Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk, the last two big free cities in Donetsk.

But an extension of Operation Vivaldi isn't without risk for the 3rd Army Corps. If the corps pushes too far, too fast across a difficult obstacle, it could expose itself to counterattack.

Ukraine's "Vilvadi" counteroffensive in the Lyman direction has not stopped, despite claims to the contrary.

Ukrainian forces have made new advances in several different areas over the last couple of weeks, crossing the Zherebets River onto its eastern bank at multiple different…

— AMK Mapping (@AMK_Mapping_) October 26, 2026

Continuing counteroffensive

Ukraine's Vivaldi counteroffensive in the Lyman direction "has not stopped, despite claims to the contrary," the mapping account AMK Mapping explained on Monday after noting possible Ukrainian forces on the eastern side of the Zherebets in recent weeks. "Ukrainian forces have made new advances in several different areas over the last couple of weeks, crossing the Zherebets River onto its eastern bank at multiple different locations." AMK Mapping also noted that many Ukrainian assaults over the past month had been repelled and that casualties were likely rising.

AMK Mapping isn't alone. On Monday, mapper Suriyak also logged Ukrainian troops on the far side of the Zherebets in three key settlements: Makiivka, Novosadove, and Terny. "They are establishing a significant bridgehead," Suriyak wrote.

The possible Ukrainian river crossings could defy recent expectations. "The Ukrainians have continued their push and advancement toward the Zherebets River," mapper Clément Molin wrote on 20 October. "They have reached it at several points, and Russian forces no longer control any territory west of this river—with the exception of the forest east of Lyman."

Ukrainian-Russian war. Day 1700-1704:
Situation on Luhansk front: During the last two weeks, Ukrainian army has managed to secure new positions on the western bank of the Zherebets River, including the south of Makiivka and the rest of Novolyubivka. However, military… pic.twitter.com/zfi1Txv3eA

— @Suriyak (@Suriyakmaps) October 26, 2026

But Molin didn't expect the 3rd Army Corps to force the river, a risky maneuver under the best of circumstances. "Despite various rumors, I have not been able to confirm that the Ukrainians have actually crossed the river," Molin wrote.

Instead, he expected the Ukrainian corps to do what the defeated Russian field armies were trying to do: consolidate in new positions and get ready for the next round of major fighting, potentially next year. "For the time being, I believe the Ukrainians will focus on consolidating their gains and adopting a defensive posture."

If indeed the 3rd Army Corps has crossed the Zherebets, it's a possible indication that the corps still has some combat power in reserve—and is eager to prolong its momentum for as long as possible, even if that means heavier losses in risky river crossings.

A major clash could occur if and when the 3rd Army Corps tries to seize full control of Terny, which anchors the Russian line on the east bank of the Zherebets. Two years ago, Terny was the site of intensive fighting as Russian forces fought their way across the Zherebets on their long march toward Sloviansk. That battle was a costly victory for the Russians as they sent mechanized column after mechanized column across a drone kill zone toward Terny.

The worst outcome for the outnumbered Ukrainian troops in northern Donetsk may be a mirror image of the Russian march through Terny in 2024. Yes, the Russians eventually captured Terny and secured a bridgehead on the western bank of the Zherebets. But the Russians overextended as they kept pushing toward Sloviansk, roughly 40 km to the southwest of Terny.

It's that overextension that afforded the 3rd Army Corps the opportunity to counterattack and roll back the hard-won Russian gains. To preserve its own recent victory on the western side of the Zherebets, the 3rd Army Corps may want to choose caution. Ukrainian forces "need to organize a coherent and solid defensive line," Molin advised.

That may mean not attacking across the Zherebets—despite the temptation to do so.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met a Lockheed Martin team led by Orlando Sanchez Jr., head of its aeronautics division, in Kyiv on 19 October, the talk was of Patriot interceptors and of repairing the Ukrainian air force's small but growing fleet of ex-European F-16 fighters inside the country. Lockheed designed the F-16 and still builds it.

But the Lockheed officials may have had other things on their minds. They gave Zelenskyy a scale model of a new and improved F-16 variant in Ukrainian livery, according to a photo posted by the MilitaryNewsUA account.

In late September, Ukraine's air force commander, Lt. Gen. Anatolii Kryvonozhko, and Lockheed discussed a possible move to newer F-16s. Now we have a clearer idea what those F-16s might look like—and what they might be capable of. The model Lockheed officials gave to Zelenskyy appears to be based on the Block 70/72 version of the classic supersonic fighter that Lockheed manufactures at its factory in Greenville, South Carolina.

A model of the F-16 Block 70/72 fighter that Lockheed Martin representatives gifted to Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their personal meeting yesterday. pic.twitter.com/tprj5yuj2z

— MilitaryNewsUA (@front_ukrainian) October 20, 2026

It's a world-class jet. But a pricey batch of factory-fresh Block 70/72s isn't actually at the top of the Ukrainian air force's wish list. Not as long as the air force's existing warplanes lack munitions.

The Block 70/72 boasts a better radar, more fuel capacity, and a tougher airframe compared to older F-16 models, which have been flying since the late 1970s. The F-16 is still one of the most numerous fighter types in US Air Force service. Surplus 1980s-vintage F-16s from Denmark and the Netherlands make up the bulk of the Ukrainian air force's front-line fleet. Norway's six are still being refurbished, and Belgium's are coming.

Whether Ukraine ever gets new F-16s is anyone's guess. Kyiv would need to pay around $100 million per copy, or find an ally to finance the purchase. Either could be a heavy lift. And to be sure, Ukraine has options as it rebuilds its battered air force. Sweden is donating 16 older Saab Gripens, the first due early next year, and Kyiv plans to buy 20 newer ones. Kyiv has negotiated to buy 16 Dassault Rafales from France, which may not arrive until 2028. Belgium has promised as many as 53 older F-16s, the last of them perhaps not until 2029.

Welcome jets

But new Block 70/72 F-16s would be welcome. The Block 70/72 builds on what already makes the F-16 great: its agility, flexibility, reliability, excellent electronic warfare systems, and compatibility with a wide array of munitions.

Where the Block 15 Mid Life Update F-16s Ukraine currently flies have the older analog AN/APG-66(V2) radar, the Block 70/72 has a digital APG-83 active electronically scanned array radar. It can also carry overwing conformal fuel tanks for extra range.

Perhaps most exciting for the Ukrainian air force, a newly made Block 70/72 is good for 12,000 hours of flight: enough for about 30 years at 400 flying hours a year. An aging Block 15 has a structural life of about 8,000 hours, and Ukraine's jets fly hard. Zelenskyy has said about half of them spend long stretches abroad for repairs, many at Sabena Aerospace Engineering in Belgium, a process that can take months.

Ukraine F-16 Pilots Rationing Missiles as Russian Attacks Intensify | NEWSMAX2

Ukraine’s American-made F-16 fighter jets are defending the skies against Russian drones and cruise missiles — but a critical shortage of U.S.-made missiles is putting that mission at risk.

In an… pic.twitter.com/WQgbasdks5

— Ukrainian Air Force (@KpsZSU) September 16, 2026

Newer F-16s require less maintenance. They can fly and fight more often. In that sense, 50 Block 70/72s are worth more than 50 Block 15s.

But the availability of airframes isn't the biggest problem in the 107th Aviation Wing, the Ukrainian air force's sole F-16 unit. The wing is desperately low on air-to-air missiles. Its pilots often resort to gunning down Russian drones and cruise missiles with the F-16's built-in 20-mm cannon—a risky tactic given how close a fighter must get to its target to make use of its gun.

While a few billion dollars' worth of fresh F-16s could keep the 107th Aviation Wing in fighting shape for decades to come, fresh airframes aren't actually the most urgent priority. Given a choice between getting new F-16s or getting substantial supplies of missiles for its old F-16s, the wing would surely opt for the latter.

The Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps' Operation Vivaldi—its secretive counteroffensive east of Sloviansk in northern Donetsk Oblast—started earlier than first reported, and by the time it ended on 14 October it had cost the Russians more than 8,000 troops, by the 3rd Army Corps' count.

It was a major Ukrainian victory in one of the most important sectors of Russia's 56-month wider war on Ukraine. But it could prove to be a temporary win, one the Russians may be able to partially reverse, if the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to throttle Starshield, the military version of Starlink that Ukraine's drones and commanders rely on.

The Ukrainians' former command and control advantage, largely attributable to once-reliable Starlink and Starshield access, was pivotal as Operation Vivaldi played out in the Donbas region in stages starting in March. That advantage shrank practically overnight on 14 October, when a new speed cap began cutting off Ukraine's Starshield terminals whenever they moved faster than about 160 km/h (100 mph).

The 3rd Army Corps attacked east of Sloviansk and north of Lyman as early as March, analyst and mapper Clément Molin concluded after scrutinizing official videos and interviews the Ukrainian defense ministry recently released. "The operation began much earlier than initially thought," Molin wrote.

We are now 5 months after the start of Ukraine's Vivaldi operation and it has now officially ended

A month after the operation was revealed, we know have much more information on the biggest Ukrainian success of the year.

THREAD1/18 pic.twitter.com/MgCoSv7Yhr

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 20, 2026

The timing was probably no accident.

In early February, SpaceX, working from a Ukrainian defense ministry whitelist, switched off the thousands of stolen and smuggled Starlink terminals the Russians had been using.

That had the effect of grounding many Russian drones and blinding many Russian commanders. Taking advantage of the Russians' confusion, Ukrainian troops attacked in several key sectors: in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts in the southeast, and east of Sloviansk in northern Donetsk.

The Donetsk attack expanded into a full-blown counteroffensive under conditions of strict secrecy as the 3rd Army Corps probed for weaknesses along the flanks of the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies, then overextended along the axis between the Zherebets River in the east and the outskirts of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk urban conglomeration in the west.

The Russians had been threatening to lay siege to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the last two big free cities in Donetsk Oblast, from two directions: the north and the south. Operation Vivaldi eliminated the northern threat—and at great cost to the Russian 20th and 25th CAAs.

Drones lead

Aerial drones and unmanned ground vehicles led the attack, taking the Russians by surprise. "For an offensive operation, the Ukrainians sustained relatively few casualties compared to previous engagements," Molin explained. "Conversely, the defending Russian forces suffered significantly higher losses, largely due to the rapid encirclement of at least three regiments, not all of which managed to escape the area."

It's unclear how many casualties the Russians suffered, but they might number in the thousands. The 20th and 25th CAAs were particularly fragile because the 3rd Army Corps and supporting drone units had been bombarding their supply line with so-called "middle strike" drones.

But many middle strike drones rely on civilian-style Starlink satellite terminals or the more rugged, better-performing Starshield. Now that the 3rd Army Corps has wrecked Russia's 144th Motor Rifle Division, which the Institute for the Study of War assessed on 20 October has effectively ceased to exist as an organized fighting force, and pushed the Russian survivors back to the far bank of the Zherebets River, the Ukrainians are probably "consolidating their gains and adopting a defensive posture," according to Molin.

But that defensive posture, protecting Sloviansk from a northern attack, depends on reliable communications and responsive drones. On 14 October, a new speed cap hit Ukraine's Starshield terminals, cutting the link on any drone flying faster than about 160 km/h. Who ordered it is disputed. Sources told Reuters the order came from inside the White House, and that Pentagon leaders were told the service needed to be slowed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk himself ordered the slowdown, and that he and Trump discussed it soon after it became public. While Trump has denied ordering the speed limit, it's worth noting that the American president has become more overtly friendly toward Russia as his Republican Party looks likely to lose control of the US Congress in the November mid-term elections.

The speed limit renders many of the faster middle-strike drones unflyable. As a result, "Ukrainian drone strikes have diminished significantly following yesterday's crippling of Ukraine's Starlink/Starshield connections, Russian sources report," the military history account ChrisO_wiki wrote on X on 15 October, the day after the speed limit took Ukrainian operators by surprise.

A reduction in middle strikes on Russian supply lines could help Russian field armies recover from recent setbacks, including their retreat back across the Zherebets River. And if the communications confusion resulting from the partial loss of Starlink/Starshield connectivity persists, it could give the Russians the same kind of opportunity the Ukrainians had back in the spring.

An opportunity to go back on the attack—and an Azov communications engineer warned Euromaidan Press in February that the shoe might be on the other foot.

That's the worst-case scenario for the Ukrainians now that Operation Vivaldi has ended. The best case is that they get full Starlink and Starshield access back—or find command and control alternatives—and duplicate, in other sectors, the same success they enjoyed in northern Donetsk.

"Now that the northern flank of Donbas is secured, at least for some time, the focus will concentrate on the southern flank," Molin predicted.

Russia's latest jet-propelled Geran-4 and Geran-5 one-way attack drones fly at 500 km/h or more, nearly three times as fast as an older, propeller-driven Geran-2.

That's too fast for many of Ukraine's air defenses. In particular, the inexpensive interceptor drones that Ukrainian forces deploy by the thousand.

Russia launched more than 2,700 jet Gerans at Ukraine in September, and Ukraine is shooting down only about 55% of them, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The speed disparity is a big part of the problem.

Ukrainian forces are scrambling for new defenses against the speedy Gerans. Among the best is actually a Ukrainian take on the Geran-4 and Geran-5: a fast, jet-propelled one-way attack drone that the Ukrainians have modified for air-to-air use.

Against jet drones, the air-to-air Bars have a hit rate of around 30%, Zelensky said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Kyiv on 4 October. "The Bars have shown positive results," Zelensky said. "They currently have the highest percentage. Others are also catching up."

In July, Ukraine and Germany agreed to jointly produce Bars, with Germany financing the first phase. Ukraine has reportedly been launching Bars at targets on the ground since at least the summer of 2025. But it was only recently that clear photos and videos of the drones have circulated.

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade released footage of one jet drone hunting another. Observers identified the interceptor as a Bars and its target as a Geran-5. After launching from an elevated ramp with help from a rocket booster, the drone's operator—seeing what the drone saw through a front-facing infrared camera—steered the drone toward the Russian drone, possibly destroying it.

Exactly how the operator controlled the Bars—whether by satellite or mesh radio or some other command and control system—is unclear. Equally unclear: what kind of warhead a Bars would employ in the air-to-air role. Many smaller interceptor drones lack warheads. Instead, they simply slam directly into their targets, wrecking them in the collision.

Ukraine’s 1021st Anti-Aircraft Missile and Artillery Brigade has released the first footage of the Ukrainian Bars jet-powered drone in its interceptor configuration engaging a Russian Geran-5 drone. https://t.co/FRBKZQR9lF pic.twitter.com/njPJWXsDwo

— Special Kherson Cat (@bayraktar_1love) October 17, 2026

Mystery drone

Bars isn't small. It likely packs an explosive warhead. Potentially one that the operator can remotely trigger when the interceptor passes near its target.

Bars is adaptable. Its maker has reworked it from a 22-kg warhead and a 700-km range to a 60-kg warhead and a stated range of more than 1,000 km, and a heavier variant can carry a 105-kg warhead.

In the air-to-air interceptor role, long range is terribly important but speed is everything. There's an obvious way for the Ukrainians to boost the Bars' speed from its reported 700 km/h top speed to potentially even faster. They could shrink the drone's warhead and its fuel load, making it lighter in order to make it faster.

That may explain how a Bars can chase down a Geran-5 even as the Russians, by one Ukrainian analyst's estimate, try to push the Geran-5 toward 700 km/h or more.

Cost is important, too. Russia churns out Gerans for an estimated $100,000 or so per drone. The cheaper the drone, the more copies the Russians can fling at Ukrainian cities. If it takes three or more interceptor drones to take down each of those 2,700 jet Gerans, Ukraine may need to deploy 8,000 to 10,000 interceptors a month.

Ukraine already builds more than 2,000 Bars a month, its maker says, but mostly in strike versions. How many go to air defense, and how much each costs, isn't public.

The supply of small jet engines could be a constraint. “Engines are a key element; we really import them in large quantities,” Zelensky said in an interview with Financial Times. "There are also domestically produced engines, but there are not enough of them.” A Ukrainian-made engine for Bars passed final tests in September.

Belgium has announced it will accelerate the delivery of surplus Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters to Ukraine. Instead of delivering three flyable F-16s before the end of the year, Brussels will ship 10.

It's unclear how many will be flyable. Previously, Belgian officials explained the first seven secondhand F-16s would include just three airworthy examples. The other four would be broken down for spare parts.

It's good news for Ukraine, but hardly cause for nationwide celebration. The handful of flyable F-16s that should arrive in the coming two months could make good recent F-16 losses. But those shipping-soon Belgian F-16s won't actually grow Ukraine's F-16 fleet by much, if at all.

The dozens of supersonic F-16s in action in Ukraine fly often and fight hard. They shoot down Russian drones and cruise missiles, tangle with Russian warplanes, and lob precision glide bombs at Russian forces on the ground. Russia launched about 2,000 jet-powered drones at Ukraine in September, up from some 350 in June, and F-16s are among the few weapons fast enough to catch them, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board noted. Every 300 flying hours, each jet must go abroad for a lengthy inspection.

The main constraint on the pace of F-16 sorties, besides maintenance demands and the availability of trained pilots, is munitions: running low or out of air-to-air missiles and glide bombs, the F-16s routinely aim their 20-mm guns at Russian targets. But even 20-mm ammunition sometimes runs low.

The busy F-16s and their equally busy pilots need reinforcement. But reinforcements are slow coming. Belgium is only slightly accelerating its F-16 shipments amid reports it will eventually give Ukraine all 53 F-16s it's gradually retiring as new Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters arrive to re-equip the Belgian air force.

Further complicating the picture, Norway's six F-16s, promised in 2023, were still being refurbished in Belgium this spring. Some arrived there in pieces.

Yes, Ukraine got 24 fight-ready F-16s from the Netherlands and most of the 19 Denmark promised. But it's lost five of those jets since 2024. And others are so worn out from relentless flying that they're badly in need of maintenance. The Belgian firm Sabena, which services Ukrainian F-16s, has struggled to keep up, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said about half of the jets spend long stretches abroad for repairs. That slows the return of repaired planes and further squeezes the front-line force.

One wing, too few jets

Donor	F-16s promised	Reached Ukraine	Status
Netherlands	24	24	Complete
Denmark	19	At least 12	Further deliveries due
Norway	6	0	Being refurbished in Belgium
Belgium	53	0	10 by end of 2026, the last in 2029
Total	About 100	At least 36, five since lost	Fewer than 40 in service

In short, it's possible the Ukrainian air force's 107th Aviation Wing, its sole F-16 unit, has fewer than 40 ready-to-fight F-16s. Those 53 Belgian F-16s will help grow the wing, but piecemeal. Ukraine should expect a handful of operational jets from Belgium this year. Under a schedule from May, the last 27, half the total, may not arrive until 2029.

To be clear, additional F-16s support the 107th Aviation Wing. The Netherlands sold 18 of its old F-16s to Romania for a token price in order to equip a training squadron, funded by a consortium of Ukraine's allies, that feeds trained pilots to the 107th Aviation Wing. But these 18 jets aren't available for front-line use. They don't even legally belong to Ukraine.

The delays in supplies of combat-ready F-16s matter because the Ukrainian air force is under stress. Its last few dozen ex-Soviet warplanes, including Mikoyan MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-27 fighters, are even older and wearier than the ex-European F-16s are. And they've suffered staggering losses in the air and on the ground in nearly 56 months of hard fighting in the wider war.

The air force does have a few ex-French Dassault Mirage 2000s that are at least as capable as the F-16s, but France has donated only a handful of the supersonic jets—and one has crashed. Any further supplies of Mirage 2000s could be complicated by the French presidential election in April 2027. The leading far-right and far-left parties are both friendly toward Russia and hostile to Ukraine.

Some relief is coming, although not quickly. Sweden has pledged 16 surplus JAS-39C/D Gripen fighters to the Ukrainian war effort; the first of these could arrive early next year. Later on, Ukraine also plans to buy 20 newer JAS-39E/Fs. Kyiv has also negotiated to purchase 16 new Rafale fighters from Paris, but the soonest these could arrive is 2028.

For now, F-16s are the main solution to Ukraine's air defense problems. Kyiv surely wishes it had more of them, sooner.

Overnight on 14 and 15 October, the Ukrainian navy fired a clutch of Long Neptune cruise missiles at Borisoglebsk air base in Voronezh, in western Russia some 260 km from the border with Ukraine.

The results were devastating. The ground-launched Neptunes struck the tarmac where six Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bombers were parked nearly wingtip to wingtip in uncovered positions.

Satellite imagery from the morning of 15 October depicted piles of smoldering wreckage. The navy said it hit all six jets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said four Su-34s were destroyed and a further two were damaged. "I thank the warriors of the Ukrainian navy for their precision!" he wrote.

The jets, he said, were loaded with aerial bombs and ready for new strikes on Ukraine. An analyst reading the imagery counted wreckage of two to four aircraft and two empty spots where damaged jets had been moved.

An Airbus Pléiades satellite image from 11 October, four days before the strike, showed the six Su-34s on open aprons. Next to them were structures that the Russian independent outlet Istories said looked like anti-drone nets or their frames. Nets can snag a small drone. A cruise missile goes through.

At roughly $50 million apiece, by the Ukrainian Air Force's estimate, the four destroyed jets alone cost Russia some $200 million. The twin-engine, two-seat, supersonic Su-34 is the Russian air force's best fighter-bomber. Almost every day, Su-34s lob KAB precision glide bombs at Ukrainian troops and civilians.

Satellite images of Borisoglebsk Air Base as of October 15, 08:25 UTC

On the night of October 15, several Su-34 were destroyed at Borisoglebsk Air Base. pic.twitter.com/3ZNBWhU6UD

— AviVector (@avivector) October 15, 2026

In nearly 56 months of hard fighting in Russia's wider war on Ukraine, the Russians have now lost no fewer than 37 Su-34s destroyed, with several more damaged, by open-source counts. Sukhoi continues to deliver new Su-34s in small batches, the latest handed over on 7 October, helping the Russians sustain their overall inventory despite heavy losses.

They've still got plenty of Su-34s, but that doesn't mean the Russians shouldn't worry. As long as they're parking warplanes out in the open within range of Ukraine's best deep strike munitions, those planes are vulnerable to attack. Russia's air defenses are spread too thin to intercept every Ukrainian munition.

Satellite imagery showing the aftermath of a Neptune missile strike on six Su-34 fighter-bombers at Borisoglebsk Airfield.

Coordinates: 51.36315, 42.18560 pic.twitter.com/7TNpxGIaB0

— Dnipro Osint (@GarbuzYe) October 15, 2026

The strike may also hit the Russian air force's training pipeline. Borisoglebsk air base is home to the 160th Aviation Training Regiment. The regiment operates Yakovlev Yak-130 trainers for more basic flight training plus—for more advanced training—front-line combat aircraft including Su-34s, Sukhoi Su-35s, and Sukhoi Su-30s.

Russian bloggers are aghast, according to a round-up of posts on Russian social media by analyst ChrisO_wiki. "How is it that, four years after the start of the Special Military Operation, there are no protective structures for aircraft at airfields located within range of Ukrainian air strikes?" blogger Ramsay wrote. "And where did the billions of rubles allocated for their construction go?"

"Much can be said about the need to build a sufficient number of concrete shelters at all airfields," blogger Vladimir Romanov pointed out. "Reality shows that, to date, sufficient measures have not been taken."

Close parking

Ramsay asked why the Su-34s were concentrated in one area, apparently so that ground crews could quickly service all of them with a single ground power unit, a mobile generator that starts an aircraft's systems before flight. "How is it that the APA, a utilitarian piece of equipment, has become so scarce that it forces an entire group of combat aircraft to be parked in a single area, making them an ideal target for attacks?"

The best defense is an active one, however, the Fighterbomber channel stressed. "Protecting aircraft by the usual method of moving them out of the line of fire at such ranges from long-range strike systems won’t work here; the only way to defend against them is with a full-scale, echeloned air defense system—both ground-based and airborne."

1/ Russian warbloggers are furious at the news that a Ukrainian missile has destroyed between 4 and 6 Su-34 jets on the ground at a Russian airfield. How is it possible, they ask, that the Russian air force is still parking aircraft close together without protection? pic.twitter.com/BrTvfCMRfH

— ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) October 15, 2026

Ukrainian planners know this. Which is why, for more than a year now, they've been systematically striking Russian radars, surface-to-air missile batteries, and mobile air defense systems. By March, Ukrainian forces were “collaps[ing] the layered defensive architecture that the Russian integrated air defence doctrine depends upon to function,” according to an in-depth investigation by Tochnyi.info.

The strikes on Russian air defenses—at least 492 of them between June and early March—are part of a carefully scripted plan. Destroying the right air defenses faster than the Russians can replace them has the effect of “facilitating strikes on more critical targets deep within Russian territory,” Tochnyi.info explained.

The critical targets include air bases such as Borisoglebsk and the expensive warplanes parked on its tarmac.

On or just before Wednesday, 14 October, Russian Geran-4 one-way attack drones struck two more cargo ships—one in the Buh River Estuary near Mykolaiv and another in Chornomorsk, 20 km south of Odesa.

They're the latest strikes in competing Russian and Ukrainian countershipping campaigns that have, since this summer, throttled Black Sea grain exports.

The jet-propelled Geran-4s are Russia's weapons of choice for these ship strikes. The drones haul warheads of up to 90 kg at up to 500 km/h and can fly more than 700 km. They already had AI-assisted targeting, and the Russians recently added terrain-matching navigation to make them less reliant on satellites and harder to jam with signal-scrambling electronic warfare.

For months, the Geran-4s and other Russian munitions have pummeled Ukrainian ports and the ships hauling grain from them. But Ukrainian forces were actually the first to escalate the shipping fight in an effort to squeeze Russian logistics.

Russian Geran-4 jet-drones struck two more cargo ships, in the Buh River Estuary and at Chornomorsk Port in Odesa Oblast. pic.twitter.com/wOXcJFAj5O

— AMK Mapping (@AMK_Mapping_) October 14, 2026

As recently as early this summer, hundreds of Russian tankers and dry cargo ships plied the Black Sea and adjacent Sea of Azov, hauling fuel and bulk supplies between ports in Russia and Russian-occupied ports in southern Ukraine.

Most of the Russian vessels were unregistered and sailed without transponders, making them a kind of regional adjunct of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” that ships Russian oil and other goods to the global market in defiance of international sanctions.

Ukrainian drones had already hit ships hauling stolen Ukrainian grain out of occupied ports in June.

On 6 July, Ukraine’s deep strike drone force finally started hunting the rest of the Russian ships. By day eight of the countershipping effort, the Ukrainians had hit 105 vessels. By day 12, drones including AI-assisted Fire Point FP-1/2s had struck 159, even a few tugboats sent to assist the damaged tankers.

Just a few days after Ukraine launched its countershipping campaign, Russia launched a retaliatory campaign targeting Ukraine’s Black Sea grain ports as well as the ships, many of them foreign-flagged, that haul grain through Türkiye’s Bosporus Strait out to the Mediterranean Sea and onward to foreign ports.

Soon, the Russian shadow fleet’s hundreds of ships were either drifting, disabled, or sheltering in Russian ports. On the other side of the Black Sea, Ukraine’s lucrative grain trade was in a state of collapse. Ports were under constant attack. International shippers were increasingly reluctant to send their vessels into the Black Sea.

Trade freefall

Grain shipment figures on both sides tell a stark tale. According to the Russian Grain Union, in September approximately 1.36 million tons of wheat shipped from Russian ports, including ports on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, compared to 5.4 million tons in September 2025—a 75% reduction.

Meanwhile, Ukraine exported 1.094 million tons of wheat in September, down from 2.051 million tons in September 2025—a 47% reduction. The only thing preventing further throttling of Ukrainian grain exports was Izmail, Renia, and Kilia—the country’s three small ports on the Danube River, which forms Ukraine’s southern border with Romania and flows into the western Black Sea a relatively short 435 km from the Bosporus Strait.

But the Russians were beginning to target the Danube ports and the grain ships heading to and from them, too. In October, Russian drones sank the Saint Kitts-flagged M/V Royad Mammadov, bound from Izmail to Ravenna, Italy, with Ukrainian grain, and the Togo-flagged M/V Alfa Watan, and damaged the Palau-flagged M/V Able, killing at least two seafarers.

“The Black Sea grain standoff, in which both Russia and Ukraine continue to suffer losses, persists,” Polish open-source intelligence analyst Thorkill wrote.

With global food prices rising partially as a result of the bottleneck in grain exports through the Bosporus, the United Nations and Türkiye have been trying to arrange talks between Russia and Ukraine regarding a possible Black Sea ceasefire.

A previous grain deal, brokered by Türkiye and the UN in 2022, collapsed a year later. Ukraine kept ships moving through its own corridor until Russian strikes shut it down this summer.

Update, 16 October: Drones hit at least four more merchant ships off Bulgaria and Romania between 13 and 15 October, sinking the HS Dignity off Krapets. At least 17 seafarers are missing. Romanian President Nicușor Dan called the attacks “attempts by Russia” to destabilize Romania and Bulgaria and said NATO’s North Atlantic Council would discuss them.

The Russians are pouring troops into a key sector just southeast of the town of Dobropillia in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, threatening to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses and march one settlement closer to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two big free cities in Donetsk.

But the Russians' push toward Dobropillia isn't without cost. Russian losses in this sector are "colossal," according to the mapper Playfra. And every soldier the Kremlin deploys along the Dobropillia axis is a soldier it can't deploy elsewhere.

And that may help explain why the Russians are falling back in two other key sectors, in northern Donetsk Oblast and in neighboring Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The Dobropillia axis is the Russians' clear priority. For the Ukrainians, that's an opportunity to attack elsewhere.

Dobropillia ORBAT - Summer 2026

Similar to last year, Russia has significantly reinforced the Dobropillia direction, seeking to capture the town itself while simultaneously developing the southeastern approach toward Druzhkivka and Kramatorsk.

To that end, the “Center”… pic.twitter.com/pDhRRlfbGW

— Unit Observer (@WarUnitObserver) September 10, 2026

Dobropillia, a former mining town with a pre-war population of around 28,000, is now a fortress. It anchors Ukrainian positions along the highway that threads northeast to Kramatorsk.

Russia has attacked here before. In August 2025, Russian troops pushed a salient toward the Dobropillia–Kramatorsk highway, and Ukrainian counterattacks cut it apart. By October that year, President Volodymyr Zelensky put Russian losses on the Dobropillia front at about 13,000.

Ukrainian military analyst Kostiantyn Mashovets describes the push on Dobropillia as the southern flank of a Russian operation to envelop the whole Sloviansk–Kramatorsk urban area. The other approaches are harder going. From the southeast, the Russians are blocked by stubborn Ukrainian forces still clinging to positions in the ruins of Kostiantynivka. From the north, starting this spring, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps rolled back 18 months of Russian gains.

For an army that's been struggling to complete its conquest of Donetsk, to say nothing of breaking through in other front-line oblasts, Dobropillia has become the priority.

And that's why the Russians are channeling fresh forces into the Dobropillia sector. Part of the 41st Combined Arms Army and units of its 90th Guards Tank Division are now fighting there, Mashovets wrote on 9 October, and the Russian command keeps feeding fresh assault infantry into the sector through the village of Nove Shakhove despite heavy losses. The open-source account Unit Observer tracked the buildup as early as September.

Potentially tens of thousands of troops from those formations join the main forces of the 2nd and 51st Combined Arms Armies, according to Mashovets, as well as elements of the Russian naval infantry, facing the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and 19th Army Corps around Dobropillia.

The reinforcements give Russian commanders more options. Mashovets expects the 51st CAA to push south and southwest of Dobropillia and the 2nd CAA toward Raksha and Sviatohorivka, enveloping the town and cutting its supply routes from Bilozerske before any direct assault. The neighboring 8th CAA is fighting around Kostiantynivka. The Russians' immediate goal is "to maintain this offensive pressure from summer into the fall," Unit Observer wrote, setting conditions for a possible siege of Kramatorsk next year.

The outlook for the Ukrainian defenders of Dobropillia is "worsening," Playfra warned on 13 October:

The Ukrainians aren't without options, Playfra explained. They should double down on their current strategy of saturating the fields around Dobropillia with drones in a ring at least 2 to 3 km deep, forestalling large-scale Russian movements until the winter strips the leaves off the trees, depriving the Russians of their best cover from overhead surveillance. This could buy Dobropillia "much more time," Playfra predicted.

Mashovets puts a date on how long Dobropillia has to hold. If it and Druzhkivka, the town just south of Kramatorsk, hold until mid-to-late December, he wrote, the whole Russian plan for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk would collapse and have to be rewritten almost from scratch.

Help isn't coming

Just don't expect a lot of Ukrainian reinforcements along the Dobropillia axis. Many of Ukraine's best troops are busy attacking.

Taking advantage of the surge of Russian manpower in the direction of Dobropillia, Ukrainian forces have counterattacked where the Russians are weakest: in northern Donetsk Oblast and also in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, just south of Donetsk.

In months of carefully planned assaults supported by ground robots and intensive drone strikes, Ukrainian forces have liberated hundreds of square kilometers in northern Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. The Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps' Operation Vivaldi in northern Donetsk largely removed the immediate northern threat to Sloviansk and neighboring Kramatorsk.

But it didn't do anything to help in the direction of Dobropillia, where the Russians have many more troops, much more firepower, and—equally importantly—a singular focus: closing the southern jaw around the last big free cities in Donetsk.

For the second time in two weeks, Ukraine's 475th Assault Regiment has demonstrated how armored vehicles can fight and survive on a battlefield buzzing with enemy drones.

The regiment encased a tank and an American-made M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle in metal frames and welded hundreds of metal spines onto those frames, transforming them into "hedgehog" vehicles. The cage makes the tank impossible to identify from the footage, and the regiment hasn't said what model it is. The frames support the spines, which trigger incoming drones' warheads a safe distance from the vehicles' hulls.

But that's not all. To shepherd the two-vehicle formation across the disputed gray zone for a close engagement with a Russian position, presumably somewhere in northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv Oblast, the 475th Assault Regiment deployed drones: both single-use first-person-view models and grenade-dropping, reusable Vampire models.

The Code 9.2 Regiment once again used the element of surprise, bringing a tank and a Bradley onto the battlefield—transformed into steel hedgehogs and covered by drones from the air. With a combined strike, the assault troops drove the enemy from several positions in… pic.twitter.com/Uq3mlWTsJq

— MilitaryNewsUA (@front_ukrainian) October 11, 2026

The vehicles and their crews didn't fight alone. They fought in mixed ground-air "combined arms" formations. The tank and fighting vehicle provided the firepower. The escorting drones provided the aerial protection. Vampire drones drop grenades to suppress Russian positions and clear mines and loitering Russian drones. FPV drones dive down to intercept the Russians' own FPV drones as they zoom in to strike the vehicles.

The 475th Assault Regiment cut together a video montage of the most recent assault. The video depicts the tank and the Bradley rolling along a well-traveled route as at least one friendly FPV and at least one friendly Vampire drone flew overhead and an additional drone watched from a short distance away.

The vehicles repeatedly came under attack from Russian FPVs and heavier loitering munitions. An escorting Ukrainian FPV moved to intercept, with unclear results. A couple of Russian drones managed to score hits on the vehicles, but their hedgehog armor held—and both vehicles appear to have survived the there-and-back daytime trip into battle.

A way forward for vehicles

It's at least the second time the 475th Assault Regiment has deployed vehicle-drone teams. The Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps used a related approach in its months-long counteroffensive in northern Donetsk Oblast, which began this spring: it sent in ground robots first, suppressing Russian strongpoints, fraying Russian supply lines, and clearing routes for manned vehicles to follow.

The unmanned aerial escorts lend the 475th Assault Regiment's hedgehog vehicles situational awareness they might not have on their own. It's well known that hedgehog armor can obscure a vehicle crew's view of the surrounding terrain. But friendly drones flying directly overhead can act as eyes in the sky for the crews on the ground.

The drones also help the vehicle crews compensate for a lack of mobility. The metal cages that support the metal spines that make up hedgehog armor tend to prevent a vehicle's turret from fully rotating. In order to aim its gun, a hedgehog vehicle has to meticulously point its whole self—turret and hull—at the enemy.

That takes trial and error, and time. The longer it takes, the more vulnerable a vehicle is to enemy drones. Friendly drones, running interference for the vehicles, can reduce that exposure long enough for the vehicle to fire a few shots.

The 475th Assault Regiment and 3rd Army Corps, among other units in Russia's wider war on Ukraine, are pointing the way forward for traditional armored vehicles in this new drone age. Yes, vehicles are more vulnerable to aerial attack than they were just a few years ago.

But no, armored vehicles aren't obsolete or useless. They just need a little help—or a lot of it—from the same kinds of drones that also make their existence so perilous.

Five months after launching Operation Vivaldi, a local counteroffensive in northern Donetsk Oblast, the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps has eliminated the Russian bridgehead on its most important long-term objective: the Zherebets River, which flows south through eastern Ukraine and forms a natural defensive barrier east of the last big free cities in Donetsk: Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

Attacking methodically under strict secrecy, the 3rd Army Corps has pushed back the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies and returned 176 sq km of northern Donetsk to Ukrainian control as of 30 September, according to Ukraine's presidential office. The figure could not be independently verified. Operation Vivaldi netted the Ukrainians hundreds of Russian prisoners and erased 18 months of Russian advances toward Sloviansk.

"Ukrainian forces have defeated the 2026 Russian campaign to seize Donetsk Oblast," the Institute for the Study of War in Washington concluded.

It's a remarkable feat for the overall outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces. Equally remarkably, the Ukrainians deftly dodged several potentially fatal traps as they flanked the 20th and 25th CAAs. They didn't get stuck in the Russians' dense minefields. They didn't expose themselves to devastating air attack. Perhaps most importantly, they didn't set their sights on distant objectives. They thought small instead of big, stacking small gains on top of small gains until those wins amounted to a big victory.

A trio of US Army officers—Col. Timothy Price, Capt. Patrick Visser, and Capt. Andrew Carter—described this achievement in academic terms. The corps' defeat of the Russian bridgehead on the Zherebets "had little to do with maneuver warfare," the officers wrote for the Modern War Institute at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York.

In military parlance, "maneuver" generally involves heavy ground forces supported by air strikes and artillery decisively breaking through enemy lines and then rushing vehicles and troops into the panicking enemy's unguarded rear area to quickly inflict maximal destruction and achieve maximal territorial gains.

That's not what the 3rd Army Corps did in its five-month—and ongoing—counteroffensive. No, the Ukrainians "won through systematic, geometric interdiction and positional pressure," Price, Visser, and Carter wrote. Put plainly, the corps carefully probed for tree-covered assault lanes toward key settlements, deployed unmanned ground vehicles to clear mines and explode the most important nearby Russian strongpoints, and then rushed in armored vehicles carrying infantry.

They marched step by step, incrementally liberating a kilometer at a time instead of running a marathon toward a major objective tens of kilometers away. In that way, Operation Vivaldi is the very opposite of Ukraine's failed 2023 summer counteroffensive, which massed tanks for what commanders hoped would be a decisive breakthrough around the village of Mala Tokmachka in southern Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

The objective at that time was to break into the Russian rear and speed tanks 80 km to the occupied city of Melitopol near the Sea of Azov. That never happened. The Ukrainians got mired in minefields around Mala Tokmachka, suffered badly from Russian air attacks, and, after a grueling season of costly attacks, lost momentum just 10 km south of Mala Tokmachka. Later Russian counterattacks erased even those modest Ukrainian gains.

Old thinking versus new

The planners of the failed 2023 counteroffensive were stuck in an old way of thinking about maneuver warfare. The planners of the successful 2026 counteroffensive shrugged off obsolete ideas. They thought smaller—and, ironically, achieved much more as a result.

The 3rd Army Corps couldn't, and didn't, do it alone. Indeed, the corps depended on the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces to fray the Russians' supply lines, electronic warfare teams to jam Russian drones, and the Ukrainian air force to bomb Russian drone operators the EW teams couldn't suppress. By contrast, the Ukrainian forces attacking south from Mala Tokmachka in 2023 did so without much aerial support.

The aerial and electronic preparation was a prerequisite for each of the 3rd Army Corps' incremental advances this spring and summer. The lesson, the officers argue, is that "higher headquarters must degrade key enemy capabilities" before a smaller ground formation can expect to gain ground and keep it. If the support falters, the ground forces won't be able to hold.

Think small. Prepare hard. Now that the Ukrainians know this is how to win on the ground, can they repeat Operation Vivaldi's success?

There's some evidence they're already doing so in the southeast, where a clutch of Ukrainian air assault brigades has been pushing back the Russian 29th Combined Arms Army.

Ukraine's campaign of so-called "middle strikes" targeting Russian supply lines isn't generating the same headlines it did back in the spring, when the campaign was intensifying.

But that doesn't mean Ukrainian units aren't launching thousands of drones a month and blowing up a lot of Russian trucks. Indeed, the pace of Ukrainian strikes, concentrated along the main supply routes threading through occupied southern Ukraine into occupied Crimea, has leveled off without ever really decreasing since an early summer surge.

It's evident Ukraine's middle-strike campaign "didn't stop and wasn't slowed down," noted French mapper Clément Molin, one of the most important observers of the counterlogistics campaign.

For September, Molin tallied 770 confirmed drone strikes on Russian trucks in the logistical zone 10 km beyond the line of contact. That's up from 630 strikes in August, 656 in July, and 586 in June, the month the campaign really got underway. There were just 214 strikes in May and at most a few dozen in each of the previous three months.

Whether Ukrainian troops can take advantage of the Russians' weakening logistics anytime soon is less evident.

Since June, the Ukrainians have hit around 700 Russian trucks a month that analysts can confirm with video and photographic evidence. There are undoubtedly many more damaged and destroyed trucks that left no digital evidence.

In southern Ukraine mid-range drone strikes continue to relentlessly target Russian road logistics

In total, more than 3 000 trucks and vehicles have been hit on key roads since May 2026, while the R-280 road remains at the heart of the attacks.

THREAD1/13 pic.twitter.com/u9hixSvLAV

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 7, 2026

There are thousands of Russian trucks on the road in Ukraine every day, so hitting 700 of them in a month won't immediately strangle Russian logistics. But that accumulating destruction does strain Russian logistics—and terrify the truck drivers who are in the drone crosshairs. "Russian drivers post videos on a daily basis, showing how dangerous a ride in southern Ukraine is getting," Molin wrote.

What's remarkable is that the counterlogistics campaign hasn't faltered even as the Russians have adapted. Early on, Russian trucks mostly traveled alone and without protection, making them fairly easy picking for a bevy of Ukrainian middle-strike drone types including the Hornet, the B-2, the RAM 2X, the Chaklun, and various high-endurance first-person-view quadcopters.

The drones ride along Ukraine's overlapping command and control systems, which include Starlink satellite terminals (some dangling from balloons) as well as mesh radio networks. Many of the drones have built-in AI for autonomously detecting and homing in on trucks in the final seconds of flight.

The moment the Hornet UAV struck a logistics vehicle in the occupied Kherson region. pic.twitter.com/Hc0DCcTnef

— Exilenova+ (@Exilenova_plus) October 7, 2026

Convoy operations

Reeling from the truck strikes, the Russians adapted this spring. Commanders began requiring all trucks to travel in convoys including mobile fire support groups, analysis group Tochnyi reported in May, citing Dmytro Putiata, a retired command post battle captain from the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces 20th Brigade "K2."

Today the Russian convoys have a standard structure, according to Molin. "Convoys usually gather three to five trucks and two to three air-defense trucks." Combined with radio jamming gear that's increasingly common on both the supply trucks and the gun trucks, that's seemingly a lot of protection.

But the drones target the gun trucks, too, peeling back the protection in order to expose the supply trucks to follow-on attacks. In that way, the Ukrainians have sustained their attacks on the supply trucks despite the increase in mobile air defense activity along the most important supply routes.

And it's going to get worse for the Russians as fall wears into winter. "Supplying Crimea is turning into a nightmare and the arrival of winter and more difficult conditions will not help," Molin wrote.

There will be less foliage on the trees lining the roads, and thus less cover from Ukrainian surveillance. Moreover, Molin pointed out, "it will be more difficult to go off-road" and avoid the big paved roads that are the main drone kill zones.

Russian logistics are under pressure, and that pressure is only increasing. Ultimately, the Ukrainians aim to starve Russian forces in Crimea. Strikes on cargo ships plying the Black Sea prevent the Russians from simply shifting the logistics off the coast. Meanwhile, strikes on overland logistics "may lead to substantial softening of front-line positions," Tochnyi noted in May.

Softening those front-line positions to the point of melting away could facilitate what Tochnyi described as "eventual breakthrough operations" in occupied southern Ukraine.

It's not inconceivable. Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps recently proved, by way of its successful Operation Vivaldi, that local Ukrainian counteroffensives are possible.

But that doesn't mean they're easy. To win, the 3rd Army Corps had to carefully husband its forces and meticulously prepare the battlefield under conditions of strict secrecy before attacking. That same kind of preparation is underway along the supply lines into Crimea, but it's unclear whether local Ukrainian forces have enough combat power in reserve to shift from defense to offense and exploit Russia's deepening supply woes.

At least not yet.

Armored vehicles aren't dead in Ukraine—they just need a lot of help. That's one of the biggest lessons from the Ukrainian 3rd Army Corps' Operation Vivaldi, its recent successful counteroffensive just north of the town of Lyman in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

Russia spent 18 months building its salient toward Sloviansk; Ukraine took much of it back in three. By 30 September, three of four planned phases in, the operation had returned 176 sq km to Ukrainian control, taken 250 Russian prisoners, and cost Russia more than 5,000 killed and wounded, Ukraine's presidential office said. It also foiled a Russian plan to break into the rear of the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk urban area, the office said.

Defying critics who insisted vehicles couldn't possibly survive in the drone-patrolled gray zone, the 3rd Army Corps repeatedly deployed mechanized forces as it counterattacked across a roughly 100 sq km salient the Russian 20th and 25th Combined Arms Armies had extended toward Sloviansk, one of the last two big free cities in Donetsk Oblast.

Maneuvering for months under a veil of secrecy, the 3rd Army Corps found and exploited gaps along the flanks of the 20th and 25th CAAs, ultimately breaking into the Russian armies' rears and forcing them to pull back across the Zherebets River in order to avoid encirclement.

Armored vehicles were key to the Ukrainian effort. They sped assault troops into battle, dropped them off under fire, and then supported them as they clashed with the Russians. "Maneuver warfare isn't going anywhere," stated Ryan O'Leary, a US Army veteran who once commanded volunteers in Ukraine.

3rd Army Corps commanders knew they were taking a risk deploying armored vehicles in a Russian-controlled salient patrolled by first-person-view drones from Russia's elite Rubicon Center drone unit. But they clearly believed that, with adequate support, the vehicles could accomplish their missions—and survive.

They were right. A dramatic video shot by 3rd Army Corps troopers depicts the troopers disembarking from their armored trucks and rushing into the fight while small arms fire clatters all around them.

Given the intensity of the Russian fire, a mechanized assault "was the only real way to push positions in an effective manner to keep losses low as well as gain and hold momentum and aggression," O'Leary wrote. Walking into battle under the cover of trees might help the infantry avoid the attention of overhead drones, but it takes too long to sustain an aggressive assault, and it can be difficult to mass enough footborne infantry to overcome stiff enemy defenses.

"This is something that hasn't changed even with the advent of drone warfare coming of age," O'Leary added. "Suppression tactics and such have changed and now there is more than just indirect fires and counterassaults that you must be able to suppress and plan for."

But the concept of the infantry-carrying armored vehicle "isn't going anywhere," O'Leary stressed. "Especially when it takes a drone tens of minutes to get to target area, acquire target and hit the target. Right now, the front is extremely susceptible to maneuvering forces on assaults if it is planned right and executed properly."

The 3rd Army Corps' Operation Vivaldi is an excellent example of an operation that was planned right and executed properly—in ways that helped the corps' mechanized forces fight and survive.

New footage shows Ukrainian forces storming and clearing Russian positions during the "Vivaldi" counteroffensive in the Lyman direction. The assault was captured firsthand by Ukrainian soldiers using GoPro cameras. pic.twitter.com/qxyNHl0n3A

— Vijesti (@Vijesti11111) October 6, 2026

Careful preparation

The corps explained that it deployed footborne scouts to find the best paths for follow-on vehicular assaults—and subsequent medical evacuations. Scouts "conducted recon of the front lines, ensured the breakthrough of equipment and led adjacent units along secret paths while evacuating the wounded," the 3rd Army Corps stated.

Before the armored vehicles rolled into action along the pre-scouted paths, the 3rd Army Corps deployed robotic engineering vehicles to clear Russian mines. After that, the corps sent in old BTR-60 wheeled armored vehicles modified for remote control and packed with anti-tank mines. These "robotic kamikaze complexes ... were used to demolish the enemy's strongest fortifications," the corps said.

Only after the assault routes were scouted and cleared of mines and Russian strongpoints did the manned vehicles and their precious infantry cargo roll out. We don't know how many losses the 3rd Army Corps' mechanized infantry suffered on the attack, but we do know they ultimately prevailed—when the battered Russian 20th and 25th CAAs retreated.

"Recent Ukrainian operations demonstrate that maneuver is not dead," stressed Mick Ryan, a retired Australian army general. "Despite the difficulty in ground operations maneuver observed in eastern Ukraine over the past few years, offensive operations are still possible in modern war. But they need the intellectual effort to develop new techniques to make them viable and repeatable at scale."

In addition to the reconnaissance and robots-first engineering and suppression tactics the 3rd Army Corps employed, Ryan recommended commanders deploy more drone-grounding electronic warfare and use AI tools to help plan attacks.

But ages-old human elements are still essential, Ryan wrote. "Developing viable methods for offensive tactical and operational maneuver in the 21^st century also demands the inclusion of older ideas about the employment of mass, logistic support and casualty evacuation [and the] maintenance of morale and leader's provision of purpose to their people."

Even when the assault route is clear, it's understandably terrifying to ride in an armored vehicle across drone-patrolled terrain. But a good leader can motivate their troops to try.