Four years into the full-scale war, Russia and Ukraine are fighting with arsenals that barely resemble each other. This guide sets the two side by side, class by class, in nine charts. As the brutal tit-for-tat missile war escalates, Russia still massively outguns Ukraine in almost all classes of missile and drone, as Kyiv's air defences dwindle.
Ukraine has won the drone war on volume. It built 2.2mn drones in 2024 and roughly 4mn in 2025, and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy now puts output at about 10mn a year with a target of 20mn. Fire Point alone claimed in July 2026 to be turning out "hundreds a day" of its FP-1 and FP-2 deep-strike drones.
Ukraine has far fewer missiles than drones. Its whole missile inventory rests on a handful of programmes, most younger than the war: the R-360 Neptune it went to war with, a stretched land-attack version that reached Russian refineries from March 2025, the FP-5 Flamingo at a claimed 100 a month, and a ballistic effort — the Sapsan, and the FP-7, which Zelenskiy confirmed in combat for the first time on October 2, 2026. The longer-range FP-9, at a reported 850 km, is in flight tests. Zelenskiy's own 2025-26 target, 30,000 long-range strike drones against 3,000 cruise missiles, says it in his own numbers: ten drones for every missile. The twelve weapons below now include the FP-7 ballistic missile and the Uravnitel glide bomb, both of which entered combat this month.
Russia has both, and far more of the expensive half. Ukrainian military intelligence put Russian output in July 2026 at 87 Kh-101 and 29 Kalibr cruise missiles, 65 Iskander-M ballistic missiles against a plan of 60, and about 40 RM-48U, retired S-400 air-defence missiles converted to hit ground targets. Russia claims capacity for more than 200 cruise and ballistic missiles a month, and fired 376 at Ukraine in July 2026, the most of any month of the war. Its cheapest weapon is cheaper still: 8,766 glide bombs were dropped in August 2026, about 283 a day, converted from Soviet stock for about $25,000 a kit and have a devastating payload of up to one tonne of explosives - about twenty times more than the average drone can carry.
The gap that has closed is the technological one - in Russia's favour. For three years its long-range drones were slow Iranian-designed Shaheds built under licence at Alabuga, and Ukraine shot down more than 90% of them. In 2026 Russia switched to jet-powered versions that fly two to three times faster, and Ukraine now intercepts about 55%. The scale of the switch is the story: 180 jet drones were launched in the whole of 2025, and 3,500 in September 2026 alone. Russia now builds about 3,000 jet Geran-4s and -5s a month against 2,800 piston Geran-2s.
The bottlenecks differ too. Russia's is supply — Chinese jet engines and Western electronics, with Ukraine claiming 95 of the 117 electronic parts in the RM-48U are US-made. Ukraine's is money: about $55bn of industrial capacity in mid-2026 against roughly $10bn of state orders.
A caveat that applies to the infographics below: production, stockpile and interception numbers in this guide are claims by Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR), Air Force, defence ministry or president, or by Russian officials and manufacturers. None is independently verified, both sides have reasons to shade them, and Ukraine stopped publishing regular missile launch totals on August 11, 2026. Where sources disagree, both figures are shown rather than averaged.
Russia's strike arsenal: the overview
Seven classes of weapon, from $10,000 decoys to intermediate-range ballistic missiles that cost millions of dollars to make, and how the two arsenals compare line by line.
Russia's strike arsenal: seven classes of weapon, production rates and a line-by-line comparison with Ukraine. Figures are Ukrainian intelligence claims unless stated.
Ukraine's strike arsenal: the overview
Ukraine went to war with one home-built long-range missile in service. Four years on it fields cruise missiles, a new class of jet "missile-drones", deep-strike drones and its first ballistic missiles — almost all of it designed and built since February 2022.
Ukraine's strike arsenal: 12 weapons from the R-360 Neptune to the FP-7 ballistic missile, with the timeline of how the arsenal was built. Figures are Ukrainian official claims.
1. Long-range attack drones
This is the weapon that defines the nightly barrage. Russia began in September 2022 with Iranian-made Shahed-136s, then bought the licence and built its own at Alabuga, where output went from about 250 a month in 2023 to thousands. Iran had stopped shipping whole drones by July 2025, Ukrainian intelligence says, though it still supplies parts. The decisive change is the engine: the jet-powered Geran-3, -4 and -5 fly far faster than the piston Geran-2 and are much harder to shoot down. Roughly a third to a half of each wave is not a weapon at all but a Gerbera or Parodiya decoy — foam and plywood look-alikes costing about $10,000, flown to soak up interceptors.
Long-range attack drones: from the Iranian Shahed-136 to the jet-powered Geran-4, plus the decoys that fly with them.
2. Cruise missile-lite
The newest class, and the one that explains how Russia keeps up the pressure without spending its missile stock. These are jet-powered, missile-shaped weapons that fly faster and carry more than a Shahed, but cost under a tenth of a Kh-101's roughly $2mn. The S8000 Banderol has become Russia's main weapon against Odesa, used in about 80% of strikes on the port in 2026. The Dan-T, a strike version of a Rostec target drone shown at an airshow in September 2026, has not reached scale by the Institute for the Study of War's assessment, but Ukrainian sources say Russia plans about 2,000 this year and 14,000 in 2027.
Cruise missile-lite: the Geran-5, S8000 Banderol and Dan-T — jet weapons at a fraction of a cruise missile's cost.
3. Glide bombs
Russia's cheapest heavy weapon, and the one that grinds down front-line towns. A UMPK kit bolts pop-out wings and satellite guidance onto a Soviet free-fall bomb, so an aircraft can release it 40-70 km away, outside most air defence. Russia has hundreds of thousands of old bombs to convert and each kit costs about $25,000. The volume has climbed every year — about 3,300 a month on average in 2024, 8,766 in August 2026 alone — and so has the reach: jet-boosted kits now fly 150-200 km, which brings Kharkiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia within range. Ukraine has no equivalent at scale: it fielded its first domestic glide bomb, the 250 kg Uravnitel or "Equaliser", only this month, and has published no output figure.
Glide bombs: the UMPK kit and the bombs it converts, and the monthly count climbing to a record 8,766 in August 2026.
4. Cruise missiles
The weapons that opened the war on February 24, 2022 and still anchor the big combined raids, fired from strategic bombers, Black Sea ships and submarines, and coastal and ground launchers. The division that matters is speed. Subsonic types such as the Kh-101 and Kalibr are the easiest things in the Russian arsenal to shoot down, and Ukraine intercepted 67% of all cruise missiles to August 2024. The supersonic anti-ship missiles turned on land targets are a different problem: just two of 362 Kh-22/32s were intercepted over the same period, and only 12 of 211 P-800 Oniks.
Cruise missiles: Kh-101, Kalibr, the supersonic Kh-22/32 and Oniks, Kh-59/69, Kh-35 and the ground-launched Iskander-K.
5. Ballistic missiles
Russia's most dangerous everyday weapon, and the reason Ukraine is so dependent on US-made Patriot interceptors: ballistic missiles arrive in minutes at several times the speed of sound, and only Patriot-class systems reliably stop them. Just 4.5% were intercepted between February 2022 and August 2024. This is also where Russia's foreign suppliers show up most clearly. North Korea's KN-23 and KN-24 have been fired at Ukraine since December 30, 2023; accuracy was poor at first and Ukraine says it has improved, with about 50 left in July 2026 and 40 more delivered by August. Iran's Fath-360 was confirmed delivered in September 2024 — more than 350 of them, part of roughly $2.7bn of Iranian missile sales — but Ukrainian intelligence reported "not a single confirmed launch" as of January 2026. Russia has also started converting retired S-400s into the ground-attack RM-48U, which made up more than half its ballistic launches in July and early August 2026.
Ballistic missiles: the Iskander-M, North Korea's KN-23/24, converted S-300/S-400 air-defence missiles, Iran's Fath-360 and the legacy Tochka-U.
6. Hypersonic and strategic
The Kremlin's prestige weapons, and the class where the rhetoric most outruns the hardware. All ballistic missiles fly faster than Mach 5, so "hypersonic" is partly a marketing label: the Kinzhal is an air-launched Iskander, and Patriots have been shooting it down since May 2023. Ukraine says Kinzhal production stopped in April 2026 over poor accuracy. The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range missile, not an intercontinental one, and all four fired so far carried inert payloads — political signals rather than strikes: no intercontinental ballistic missile has ever been fired at Ukraine, despite reports to the contary.
Hypersonic and strategic: Kinzhal, Zircon and the Oreshnik — and why none of them is an ICBM.
7. Tactical front-line weapons
At the front the war is fought by millions of small drones that hunt soldiers, vehicles and supply trucks up to 40 km behind the line, turning a wide strip of land into a kill zone. This is the class where Russia has caught up with Ukraine on scale: more than 1.5mn drones reached the front in 2024 by Putin's account, and Ukraine's commander-in-chief says Russia plans 7.3mn FPVs this year. Russia has also built the institutions to go with the hardware — the Rubikon centre, set up in August 2024, grew from about 1,450 staff to roughly 5,000 by spring 2026 and hunts Ukrainian drone teams — while its drone forces are set to roughly double to 165,000 troops by the end of 2026. Artillery is where it leans hardest on allies: North Korea has shipped more than 7mn shells and rockets since 2023, between a quarter and 40% of Russian supply, plus more than 600 artillery systems.
Tactical front-line weapons: FPV and fibre-optic drones, the Lancet and Molniya, North Korean shells and the Rubikon drone centre.
This article was produced with the help of IntelliNews Lambda analytical tool