(KYIV, UKRAINE) – Ukrainian forces are focusing deep strike operations on Russian oil refineries and airfields rather than pursuing mobile missile launchers because fixed infrastructure offers a far higher probability of successful engagement, according to former British military intelligence planner Philip Ingram.
Ingram, who spent 26 years in the British military, most of it in military intelligence, addressed the question of why Ukraine targets fixed sites hundreds of miles inside Russia instead of the mobile launchers firing ballistic missiles at Ukrainian cities.
A ballistic missile is a rocket, not a plane or drone. It is boosted upwards by its own engine for tens of seconds to a couple of minutes in what is called the boost phase. The engine then cuts out and the missile falls under gravity along a curved ballistic path. The middle stretch is the midcourse phase, often outside the atmosphere altogether. The terminal phase sees the missile diving back through the air onto its target, sometimes at more than a mile per second.
Russia has been using four main ballistic missile systems against Ukraine.
The Iskander-M is Russia’s standard short range ballistic missile with a range of roughly 500 km. It is fired from a road mobile launcher, a huge eight wheel truck called a transporter erector launcher that carries two missiles. The Iskander flies a quasi ballistic depressed trajectory, flattening its path and manoeuvring to the end to defeat missile defences.
The KN-23, sometimes called the Hwasong 11, is North Korean supplied to Moscow in large numbers, believed to be well over one hundred delivered. It behaves almost like an Iskander clone with a terminal pull up manoeuvre designed to dodge Patriot intercepts. Early examples had reliability problems with several breaking up mid flight, but performance has improved.
The Kinzhal is launched from the air from a MiG-31 fighter or sometimes a bomber. It is essentially an Iskander adapted to be dropped from altitude, already travelling fast before its rocket motor lights. Russia claims it flies at ten times the speed of sound. Real world tracking suggests it is often significantly slower.
The Oreshnik was first used in November 2024 against Dnipro, hitting the Pivdenmash missile factory. It is a genuine intermediate range ballistic missile, hypersonic, launched from deep inside Russia reportedly from Kapustin Yar in Astrakhan Oblast. Unlike the others, it is capable of carrying multiple separate warheads that split apart and come down on different aim points at once.
All of these ballistic missiles can be armed with a nuclear warhead or a conventional warhead, and it is impossible to tell which until after it has landed and exploded.
In one night in March 2023, Russia launched 84 missiles at Ukraine in a single coordinated attack, including six Kinzhals, the largest use of that weapon at the time.
The challenge of countering these systems breaks down into three elements: find, fix and strike.
Finding a launch begins with early warning satellites in orbit that detect the intense infrared flare when a ballistic missile’s engine ignites. This is measurement and signature intelligence. Ground and airborne radar then locks onto the missile as it climbs and calculates its trajectory, where it came from and where it is going to land.
For a short range missile like the Iskander or KN-23 flying three or four hundred kilometres, the entire flight from engine cut off to impact takes around three to five minutes. A Kinzhal can be faster still.
The moment the flash is detected, three things must happen simultaneously. First, work out roughly where it was launched from. Second, warn the probable target area with sirens and phone alerts. Third, cue every air defence system in the missile’s path, including Patriot, IRIS-T and NASAMS.
Patriot batteries have shot down Kinzhal missiles that Russia claimed could not be intercepted. That is air defence stopping the arrow in flight. Going after the archer is a much harder problem.
Fixing a target means obtaining a precise confirmed grid reference good enough to put a weapon on it, down to less than ten metres circular error of probability. For a mobile launcher, this is where the chain nearly falls apart.
The Iskander launch vehicle can be ready to fire from a standing alert position in around five minutes. Even moving from the march, it can be firing within roughly 16 minutes. It fires both missiles inside about a minute and then moves immediately. That is called shoot and scoot.
By the time the launch position is identified, the vehicle is already gone. Fixing the launcher’s current position takes layers of intelligence including satellite images compared frame to frame, signals intelligence listening for radio and radar chatter, drones watching known dispersal areas and human sources on the ground.
Russia uses decoys, tree cover, tunnels and underpasses to buy launchers time to disappear.
In 1991, the United States and its coalition partners flew thousands of sorties hunting Iraqi Scud launchers across the Western Desert. By the war’s end, they could not confirm they had destroyed a single mobile launcher. Iraq used decoys that fooled pilots repeatedly, hid vehicles in culverts and gullies, and had too much empty desert to search.
Russia is roughly 70 times the size of that Iraqi search area. Hiding a truck is fundamentally easier than finding one.
Striking a fixed launcher position creates three problems. First, time. Whatever strikes the launcher has to be ready and airborne or ready in a launcher knowing the targeting information is coming in. Second, range and the right weapon. Many launchers fire from deep inside Russian territory beyond the reach of Western supplied weapons like Storm Shadow or ATACMS, which have also been politically restricted at various points. A Storm Shadow is a cruise missile that flies slowly, taking tens of minutes or hours to reach deep into Russia. By the time it arrives, the launcher is long gone. The only way to react quickly is with another ballistic missile. Third, trust in the intelligence. Every long range precision weapon is expensive and stockpiles are finite.
Britain is directly trying to close that gap. In January 2026, the Minister of Defence launched Project Nightfall, a new road mobile vehicle launched ballistic missile built specifically for Ukraine, designed to put a 200 kg warhead onto targets more than 500 km away. It is being run as a rapid competition between industry teams with test rounds expected within about a year.
Ukraine has adapted by targeting fixed infrastructure. A refinery does not move. Once found, it can be fixed permanently and struck again with a far higher chance of success per weapon fired. Hunting one mobile launcher can absorb the same satellites, drones and human intelligence as tracking dozens of fixed targets.
A Kinzhal armed MiG-31K cannot be easily hunted once airborne, but it must take off from one of a small number of known air bases. In June 2025, Ukrainian strikes hit Savasleyka air base deep inside Russia, damaging MiG-31s and Su-34 aircraft on the ground. Russia can no longer build new MiG-31s. Every Kinzhal carrier lost is gone for good.
Ukraine is fighting the threat on two fronts at once: air defence intercepting missiles in flight and a deep strike campaign against fixed infrastructure that keeps the Russian war machine fuelled and supplied.
Chasing the archer is sometimes worth it, but building an air defence net that can catch the arrow while bleeding the archer’s supply lines dry is the more reliable battle plan.
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