Countering Russian Cruise Missiles and Long-Range Drones

Russian long-range drone and cruise missile developments, production increases, and Western interceptor capabilities.

Over the past week, Russia has launched over 1,800 Geran-2 (the indigenized version of the Iranian Shahed-136) alongside decoy long-range drones. This marks a sharp increase in the average intensity of long-range drone attacks per day, peaking at 728 combined drones and decoys on 9 July. This is on top of dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles being launched at Ukraine.

Beyond the quantitative increase, Russia has recently introduced qualitative changes that both enhance the lethality of its long-range drones and make them harder to intercept (while likely also making them more expensive).

This post reviews recent developments in the long-range drone domain and assesses the capacity of the Western defense industrial base to respond to airbreathing missile threats, including Geran-2-type drones and land-attack cruise missiles.

It is the second part of my analysis of Europe’s missile defense capabilities in the context of Russia’s growing missile production. Last week’s post examined Russian ballistic missile capabilities and Western missile defense. You can access it here.

Qualitative Russian long-range drone and cruise missile developments

Recent reports indicate that Russia has increased the payload capacity of its Geran-2 drones. While earlier versions carried a 20–40 kilogram warhead, newer variants are equipped with payloads of up to 90 kilograms.

The lethal radius of a warhead scales with the cube root of its yield, so doubling or more of the payload does not automatically translate into a proportional increase in lethality. However, when combined with reported increases in overall and terminal velocity in some Geran-2 variants, resulting in deeper warhead penetration into the target structure, this has enabled Russia to greatly enhance the overall destructiveness of its long-range drone attacks.

In addition, debris has revealed that some Geran-2 drones now deploy terminal guidance seekers in the form electro-optical and infrared cameras, increasing their accuracy. Upgraded electronics improving their resistance to jamming efforts have also been reported.

When evaluating these developments, it's important to remember that such upgrades come at a cost. Increasing the drone’s velocity, for instance, likely requires a more advanced turbojet rather than a turboprop engine, which can significantly raise expenses. This eats into the budget and undermines one of the drone’s key advantages: its relatively low cost compared to more expensive missile systems. These enhancements, therefore, are not always an obvious or cost-effective choice.

However, the relative success of recent Russian long-range drone strikes indicate that Russia appears to have struck a favorable balance, at least for now.

In contrast to long-range drones, qualitative developments and upgrades in cruise missiles have been more limited. Relatively early in the war, Russia began integrating flares into its cruise missiles, likely preset to deploy during the terminal approach to defend against infrared-seeking interceptors, though they appear to have had little effect.

This being said, cruise missiles have remained a persistent and dangerous threat due to their high speed, low flight altitude, precision, and especially their large payloads. Russian land-attack cruise missiles, such as the 3M-14 and Kh-101, typically carry a 450-kilogram warhead, capable of inflicting substantial damage against softer targets.

Quantitative Russian long-range drone and cruise missile developments

Russian efforts are particularly notable at the quantitative level. By the end of 2024, Ukrainian sources reported that Russia had reached an annual long-range drone production capacity of 6,000. By mid-2025, this production capacity had increased to over 30,000 Geran-2 and decoy drones. This was achieved through the expansion of existing facilities and the addition of new production sites.

This has enabled Russia to regularly launch 500 to 700 long-range drones in nightly attacks. Russia aims to further expand production to make sustained drone attacks reaching 1,000 per night both feasible and routine.

Cruise missile production has also increased, though not as explosively as long-range drone production. Recent Ukrainian intelligence reports estimate that Russia is producing between 1,260 and 1,560 land-attack cruise missiles annually, including the Kh-101, 3M-14 Kalibr, and 9M728/9M729.

In addition, Russia is manufacturing other cruise missile types, including anti-ship variants repurposed for land attack, such as the Kh-32, 3M55 Oniks, and 3M22 Zircon. The Kh-69, a subsonic land-attack cruise missile with improved stealth characteristics, reportedly entered production in 2023. Taken together, Russian cruise missile output likely exceeds 1,500 units annually and may approach 2,000.

Countering Russia’s cruise missile arsenal

Similar to ballistic missile defense, Western states have significantly expanded their production capacities for systems designed to counter Russian cruise missile and drone threats, and have delivered these in substantial numbers to Ukraine.

Unlike the situation with ballistic missiles, a denial-based missile defense strategy against cruise missiles appears somewhat feasible, though challenges persist.

For cruise missile defense, European states, including Ukraine, have primarily relied on Germany’s IRIS-T SLM, produced by Diehl Defence, and the American-Norwegian NASAMS, jointly developed by Raytheon and Kongsberg.

Diehl Defence currently produces around 500–600 IRIS-T SL interceptors annually. With a new production facility expected to come online by 2026, this number is projected to increase to 800–1,000, alongside the annual delivery of up to ten fire units.

NASAMS uses the AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM as its main interceptor. Raytheon’s total annual AMRAAM production is around 1,200 missiles, but this includes multiple variants, particularly the AIM-120D-3. An estimate puts the share of AIM-120C-8 production at 400–600 missiles per year, though significant uncertainty remains. Not all of these are allocated to NASAMS; many are intended for use on U.S.-supplied fighter aircraft for air-to-air engagements. As a result, AIM-120C-8 interceptor availability in Europe for NASAMS remains limited.

NASAMS also employs the AIM-9X, which has proven effective in Ukraine against both drones and cruise missiles. While it has a shorter range (15–20 km compared to the AIM-120C-8’s 35–40 km), it is cheaper and produced at a rate of over 1,600 missiles annually, with plans to expand to 2,500. This considerably strengthens the interceptor base available to NASAMS users, including European customers.

At present, Russian cruise missile production likely exceeds the number of available Western interceptors. However, the gap is not large and is expected to narrow or close entirely in the coming years. Furthermore, Western cruise missile defense systems have demonstrated close to 100 percent success rates in Ukraine, implying that no more than one interceptor needs to be allocated per incoming missile — assuming occasional leakers are tolerated.

Cost-efficiency remains a concern, as Russia produces cruise missiles more cheaply than Europe and the U.S. produce their interceptors, although the cost gap is smaller than in the case of ballistic missile defense. More limiting is launcher availability, which constrains the overall defendable area due to the relatively short range of each system.

Even so, the outlook is far less grim than in the case of Russia’s expanding ballistic missile arsenal.

Countering Russia’s long-range drone arsenal

Russia’s significant production capacity for long-range drones, resulting in an enormous and growing attack volume, poses the greater short-term challenge, though it is arguably the most manageable long-range strike problem Europe faces over the medium to long term.

Western arsenals currently lack cost-effective interceptors for long-range drone defense. This forces Ukraine — and, in a future conflict, European states — to choose between expending interceptor missiles that cost 20 times more than the drone, relying on anti-aircraft guns that are not widely available, or allowing the drone through and accepting the resulting damage.

Ukraine is already confronting this dilemma, which has become more acute as Russia has adapted drone flight trajectories to bypass the engagement envelope of systems like the German-supplied Gepard by flying at higher altitudes.

However, this may change in the near future. Several European companies, located in Estonia, Germany, and Ukraine, among others, are currently working on a cheap interceptor capabilities that can deal with Geran-2-type drones cost-effectively.

A major challenge is designing an interceptor system that can match the speed of long-range drone targets while remaining affordable. This has reportedly been one of the key obstacles for Ukraine, especially as the speed of Russian long-range drones continues to increase. That said, some companies are developing systems that account for this evolving threat profile.

Frankenburg Technologies, an Estonian defense startup, has proposed a low-cost interceptor powered by a solid-fuel rocket motor. Unlike the “interceptor drone” concepts proposed in Ukraine, solid-fuel vehicles offer high acceleration and speed, traits well-suited to engaging fast-moving targets.

Naturally, the range of such interceptors will be limited, regardless of design. This necessitates a relatively large and decentralized network of interceptors, supported by substantial reserves for point defense around high-value targets. Still, this approach is feasible in principle. Moreover, these technologies have the potential to undercut Russian long-range drones in cost, especially as the latter grow more expensive due to increasing sophistication.

The cost of an individual Geran-2 has been cited at between 30,000 and 70,000 USD. With the integration of more advanced propulsion and seeker technologies, this figure may approach — or exceed — 100,000 USD. A defensive interceptor capability priced at or below 50,000 USD would therefore offer a cost-effective solution, particularly given Europe’s greater long-term financial capacity.

Moving in the right direction

Russian cruise missiles, along with ballistic missiles, continue to pose a persistent and serious challenge to Europe’s security environment. In recent weeks, however, long-range drones have emerged as the most immediate threat to Ukraine’s skies and cities.

Urgent action is needed to close the current gap in Europe’s missile defense architecture to counter these drone attacks.