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Air Defence Log

Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukraine tracked from October 2022 to present, with Ukrainian Air Force interception data verified by CSIS. Over 100,000 aerial weapons have been launched against Ukraine — primarily Shahed/Geran loitering munitions — with a sustained ~70% overall interception rate maintained throughout the campaign despite Russian adaptation and volume increases.

Key findings — original analysis
Weather has no significant effect on interception rates
Analysis of 603 Shahed attack days cross-referenced with Open-Meteo ERA5 weather data found no statistically significant relationship between night-time weather and Ukrainian interception rates (r=0.051, p=0.21). Ukraine's air defence is weather-robust. Clear nights: 70.7%, Overcast: 72.2%, Adverse: 68.2% — within error margins.
Saturation threshold: 61–150 weapons degrades performance
The 61–150 weapon volume band produces the lowest interception rates (66–67%), below the 74% overall mean. Counterintuitively, the highest-volume attacks (600+ weapons) achieve an 83% interception rate — above average. Mass swarms do not overwhelm Ukrainian air defence in the way commonly assumed. No attack night fell into the "overwhelmed" (<55%) category.
Shahed-as-decoy hypothesis not supported
Mixed salvos (Shahed + missile, n=497) produce a 73% interception rate vs 75% for Shahed-only (n=411). The 2-point difference is within error margins. Mixed nights use higher volumes (113 weapons vs 101), suggesting any marginal degradation reflects volume effects rather than a decoy function.
Weapon mix: Shaheds now 85–90% of all launches
Shaheds have grown from ~45–50% of launches in late 2022 to 85–90% by 2025–2026. Monthly launch volumes reached 8,000+ by early 2026 — approximately 20× the campaign baseline. Russia has substituted cheap Shahed mass for expensive precision missile strikes as a primary strategic tool.
Live data — air defence statistics
—Total launched
—Total intercepted
—Overall intercept rate
—Got through
—Attack waves logged
—Largest single wave
INTERCEPTION RATE OVER TIME — DRONES vs MISSILES
Methodology & data source

Data sourced from the Petro Ivaniuk dataset (Kaggle: piterfm/massive-missile-attacks-on-ukraine), compiled from Ukrainian Air Force official daily reports. Verified by CSIS as matching official figures. Coverage from 27 September 2022 to present, updated daily via automated GitHub Actions scraper. Original analysis by Andro Mathewson, PhD Candidate in War Studies, King's College London. Weather data: Open-Meteo Historical Archive API.