During its war in Ukraine, Russia has developed the capacity to routinely conduct integrated, conventional precision strikes at scale. Experts suggest that NATO must prepare to counter these developments through building layered defences, dispersing forces, and conducting offensive counter-ISTAR operations.
Russia has accelerated the evolution of integrated capability and capacity to conduct extensive precision strikes against land targets in Ukraine. This is raising questions for NATO regarding how to counter the military-operational and technological challenges generated by this evolution, a Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) expert told the organisation’s annual integrated air and missile defence (IAMD) conference.
For some time, NATO military leaders have spoken of the alliance’s requirement for 360-degree IAMD coverage against conventional strike missile-based threats. Russia’s extensive use of such capabilities against Ukraine, and what it has learned from so doing, has only underscored this requirement.
Across its four-year war with Ukraine, Russia has learned lessons about how to apply its military capability to optimum effect in support of its strategy. In terms of precision strike capabilities, these lessons include building mass in ballistic and cruise missiles and in uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), enhancing tactical planning skills, and increasing coordination of intelligence, surveillance, targeting acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) assets to harness and enhance the use of such mass and skills, Dr Jack Watling – RUSI’s senior research fellow for applied military sciences – told the conference.
With these lessons woven into Russia’s approach, “There has been a step change in how the Russians do planning, coordination, and integration of these capabilities,” Watling said. Moreover, Russia’s learning and evolution is continuing.
“It’s not a static threat,” Watling continued. For example, Russia is growing its missile and uncrewed systems inventory, through larger orders for key long-range precision strike weapons including its Kh-101 air-launched, Iskander-K ground-launched, and Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles. Lack of capacity in ‘salvo weight’ for some systems has proved to be a limiting factor for Russian operations, Watling added.
“What we’re seeing in the state defence order this year is an attempt to expand the number of launchers they have,” Watling explained. “[This] is a realization the Russians have taken some time coming to, but it certainly poses questions in terms of NATO’s ability to find and strike those systems.”
A core part of the answer for NATO, said Watling, is to “think offensively” regarding how to conduct strike operations of its own within its IAMD concept, construct, and capability. This includes targeting launch and logistics points, to drive force dispersal and reduce efficiency: this will have value, but will not eliminate the threat, Watling explained.
“It’s also about degrading the ISTAR [capability], aggressively degrading the enemy’s ability to find and put together an accurate picture,” Watling added. “That is probably the way [NATO countries] gain the greatest level of protection, reducing the adversary’s ability to understand and set up these strikes.”
“So, counter-ISTAR becomes a critical IAMD element, if we are to be effective,” Watling said.
Strike operations evolution during the Russo-Ukraine war illustrates the changing impact of such operations on NATO’s IAMD requirements.
Watling explained that, in late 2022, Russian Shahed/Geran one-way attack (OWA) UAV strikes were conducted at a relatively slow tempo, with maybe two major waves launched each month and small-salvo attacks occurring in between. “That intermittency of the Russian strike campaign was partly a function of ‘magazine depth’, but was also a function of their planning processes,” he said. “It took the Russians quite a long time to map [Ukraine’s] defences, plot the routes, get the equipment where they needed, and synchronize these sorts of activities.”
The situation is vastly different today. By early 2026, Russia had the capacity to launch strikes using hundreds of missiles each night – sometimes firing up to 1,000 rounds. These strikes consisted of “complex salvoes of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. These were being dynamically planned,” Watling said.
Despite the Ukrainian defenders conducting extensive risk assessments and further reinforcing already-deep defensive layers, the consequence of this improved planning was that “invariably the Russians would start flying around the seams of what had been laid out because they were able to update the routes and the mapping, their ISTAR was sufficient, and they were able to generate target packs and coordinate the strikes within 24 hours,” Watling explained.
Such continuing evolution is evident in Russia’s UAV use. Watling said, in 2022 many Russian UAVs navigated straight to target, using waypoints. Today, many now fly under direct operator control, and Watling noted several examples illustrating how increasingly sophisticated collaborative layers are being built, including during missions. First, one UAV can act as a rebroadcasting point within a group of UAVs. Second, if a Ukrainian air-defence site illuminates or is identified, a UAV can peel off from a group to attack it while the others continue with the mission. Third, rather than just striking a Ukrainian airfield, UAVs under may loiter on station and wait for aircraft to emerge from hardened shelters; more UAVs will arrive if the first ones are shot down.
Russia’s extensive UAV use including to target Ukrainian IAMD nodes has a second-order effect of creating a more congested battlespace, which in turn complicates Ukraine’s ability to target ballistic and cruise missile launch sites and Russia’s own IAMD nodes. “Defeating those prestige systems is still the priority, but what is making that harder is their collaboration with the cheaper systems [UAVs], which will degrade, saturate, and directly attack defences,” Watling said. This creates a challenge for NATO IAMD concepts built around air-based interception of inbound threats like cruise missiles. “Flying after and shooting down a cruise missile with an air-to-air missile is one thing; doing it when there is a cloud of relatively slow-flying, low-signature objects surrounding that missile is a very, very difficult task,” Watling argued.
However, UAVs do have limitations in supporting long-range precision strike campaigns. “This is largely a function of velocity and payload,” Watling said.
Both Russia and Ukraine have experienced the impact of this limitation. Ukraine has conducted long-range UAV strikes into Russia, with significant strategic effect. However, such strikes have been relatively restricted in regularity. Other capabilities offer more. “If the Ukrainians had a greater number of cruise missiles, there are plenty of targets they could engage,” Watling added.
One area where NATO does have a plethora of capability is cruise missiles. This is a consequence of building conventional long-range precision strike capabilities across the post-Cold War years as an alternative to nuclear deterrence, and to provide long-range precision engagement in expeditionary operations.
Russia’s improving strike capability and coordination has clear implications for NATO’s own IAMD planning. These lessons are similar, and different, to what Ukraine is learning. Watling highlighted some differences.
“The Ukrainians have very significant amounts of strategic depth. Therefore, they can put multiple layers of low-probability-of-intercept systems on the paths of the threat and have multiple attempts to strike it, and that can still be economical,” he explained. Ukraine’s strategic depth – with a lot of airspace for Russian systems to cross, above well-layered air defences – means a high volume of Russian systems are shot down.
“If we compare that to what’s happening in the Gulf [the current conflict, between the US/Israel and Iran] or what could happen in certain NATO countries lacking that depth for certain targets, it becomes much harder to use those cheaper systems with a lower probability of intercept,” Watling continued. “It also becomes harder to use the cheaper acquisition means of tracking these targets, because they are not overflying a large number of sensors before you set up the intercept of them.”
NATO’s challenge is underlined by Russia’s continuing evolution of UAVs like the Geran family in coordination terms (for example, with cruise missiles) and capability terms (for example, adding jet engines to increase range and speed), Watling continued.
Using decoys and mobile IAMD concepts will be important steps NATO can take. However, Watling noted that Russia is improving its capacity to track displacing air-defence capabilities.
