Russian FAB glide bombs struck Pavlohrad, in Dnipropetrovsk oblast, more than 80km from the front line and over 150km from their likely launch point, on August 4 — a range that has stunned open-source analysts tracking the weapon. "How did they manage to hit that far? I believe this is the new UMPB-5R kit that allows the bomb to fly up to 150 km or more," wrote popular milblooger Clement Molin, who called the development "a real game changer if rear bases, command posts, and stabilisation points can be easily targeted, as well as large cities."

The extended-range kit has turned what were once cheap, short-range unguided WWII munitions into a precision threat Ukraine has no reliable means of intercepting. Russia has sharply escalated its use of the weapon on Sumy in recent months — more than 30 bombs in June, 50 in July and 23 in the first week of August alone, according to Vladimir Babich, deputy head of the regional military administration.

"In simple terms, in June, one bomb fell on the heads of city residents per day, in July, it was two on average, and in August, it was four," Babich said. Kherson has taken repeated hits too: four guided bombs struck the city centre on July 31 alone, injuring five people, with no sign of the pace slowing.

Ukraine's drones are cheap individually, ruinous in bulk

Ukraine's answer to Russia's mass has been mass of its own: long-range drones and interceptors launched in volume to offset Russia's advantage in guided munitions. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in July that Ukraine is now producing 10mn drones a year, a scale-up former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has credited with lifting the drone interception rate from 83% to 91% and the cruise-missile interception rate from 47% to 87% during his tenure.

But that scale comes at a cost Ukraine's budget is struggling to absorb. Russia's own drone barrage has intensified in parallel — and Russia’s glide bombs are cheap by ocmparison, as it has a large stock left over from Soviet-times.

Moscow's mayor reported nearly 2,000 Ukrainian drones approaching the Moscow region in a single week at the start of August, of which only 82 were shot down close to the capital, the rest intercepted further out. Both sides are now locked into an arms race measured in sheer drone volume rather than unit sophistication.

Publicly available Ukrainian budget breakdowns put military spending on drones and unmanned systems at more than a tenth of total defence expenditure, a level defence economists say is becoming difficult to sustain even with the tens of billions of Western financial support approved in December, as attrition rates on both cheap first-person-view drones and more expensive long-range strike types remain high.

The economics are stark at the top end of the drone fleet too: pro-Ukrainian military analysts estimate that of 39 Flamingo cruise missile launched by Fire Point in May and June, only six actually hit their targets — roughly a 15% success rate for one of Ukraine's most expensive indigenous strike systems, which one open-source military analyst noted may explain persistent rumours of "massive state privileges and graft" surrounding the programme's financing.

America's own missile stocks are running dry

A missile crisis has developed amongst the Western allies. The weapons Ukraine needs the most are also the weapons the US itself has been burning through fastest. The US Army fired more than 1,300 tactical ballistic missiles at Iran during this year's war and consumed nearly its entire stockpile of long-range PrSM and ATACMS missiles doing so, according to US officials cited by The Washington Post. Saudi Arabia used 86% of its own stockpile of 2,800 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors in the first 38 days of the Iran conflict, leaving just 400 by April, and the US itself has expended roughly 65% of its Patriot interceptor stock between February and July, down to fewer than 850 on hand from 2,330 before the war began, according to Reuters, citing Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).

That depletion is precisely why President Trump's July pledge to licence Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles domestically will do little for the war Ukraine is fighting right now — military analysts caution it will be years before a Kyiv-built PAC-3 interceptor rolls off a production line, while Russia is already producing enough missiles of all types to fire half a dozen at Ukraine daily. Ukraine and the US are separately working to modernise older S-300 systems or develop a new variant, expected to become operational near the end of 2026 with a production run of 100 to a couple of hundred interceptors a year — a fraction of what the current threat requires.

Zelenskiy has also ordered his diplomats to find out how many missiles of any sort are sitting in stockpiles of host countrie sand persude the governments there to send some to Kyiv. In addition, in a surprise deal, Turkey agreed to sell Ukraine 70 US-made ATCMS as a welcomed stopgap measure and anncouend the Trump administration would send a few Patriot interceptors to Ukraine every month. But despite this relief, the volume of missiles supplies will do little to change the course of the war, say experts. It is another example of the Western policy of supplying “some, but not enough” military aid that has mired support throughout the war. Europe's own rearmament programme is unravelling from the inside for the same reasons, as the war in Iran continues to draw down the same global stockpiles Ukraine is competing for. As domestic interceptor stocks run dry, Zelenskiy has been left scouring the world for more, with no quick fix in sight while Russia's guided-bomb range keeps extending and global interceptor supply keeps shrinking.