These tactics — described in interviews with Ukrainian air defense commanders and experts — were once viewed as the last resort of a scrappy military with limited resources. But such adaptation is increasingly important as Ukrainian cities face an onslaught of barrages from Russia, as they did with an attack on Monday.
The evolution of tactics is also becoming an essential battlefield model as the war in Iran and the attacks in the Gulf have drained global supplies of the most advanced Patriot interceptors. Ukrainian soldiers have already deployed to the Gulf to train local troops on cheaper and more effective tactics to intercept drones.
“We initially used the tactics and the knowledge that we had been taught in America,” said Viacheslav Aheiev, the commander of a Patriot unit in Ukraine who trained on the system at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
Once combat use began, he said, Ukrainians realized they had “to introduce some of our own experience and skills, and slightly change the tactics of employment, moving away from the templates that we had been taught in the United States.”
For example, the Ukrainians learned to often fire just one interceptor at incoming ballistic missiles instead of the usual two or more because of shortages of the expensive American-made weapons.
Russia regularly launches barrages of various types of missiles and drones that overwhelm Ukraine’s exhausted, overworked and dangerously undersupplied air defense operators. In particular, Moscow has ramped up production of ballistic missiles.
Ballistic missiles move much faster than cruise missiles and Patriots are the only air defense system in Ukraine’s arsenal that can shoot them down. Ukraine has other air defense systems that can intercept cruise missiles.
Ukrainian forces largely reserve the Patriots for trying to stop only the fastest-moving ballistic missiles.
They also set the Patriots to manual mode to avoid automatic firing on targets like slow-moving, inexpensive drones that could be taken down by other means. They learned to shoot down drones with machine guns operated from rooftops, truck beds and helicopters and, more recently, with interceptor drones that can take down the Russian drones midflight.
Other tactics the Ukrainians have adopted include learning to “shoot and scoot,” quickly moving the batteries after firing to prevent Russia from targeting the batteries in counterstrikes. They also employ deception to lure Russian fire away, hiding their real Patriot batteries under camouflage while producing realistic decoys that run just $30,000 apiece. A fully loaded Patriot system is worth roughly $1 billion.
Several countries have also reached out to Ukraine requesting exports of Patriot decoys, according to a leading manufacturer of the devices who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his factories are top Russian targets.
Despite the innovation, the Ukrainian approach is far from enough to keep the country from being hammered by Russian missiles and drones.
So far this year, Russia has launched 521 ballistic missiles at Ukraine, more than twice as many as in the same period in 2025. Ukraine has knocked down 164 of them, according to a New York Times data set based on numbers from Ukraine’s Air Force.