Ukraine's Interceptor Crisis is Worse Than You Think

We'll start today with a quote . The last 24 hours have vividly illustrated everyone here that despite all of Ukraine's military achievements , its advancements in drone warfare , and its success in taking the fight increasingly deeper into Russian territory , still the skies above Ukraine are not safe . These are the words of BBC journalist Dan Johnson , who is reporting live from Kyiv on the night of August the 5th , just a few short hours after a Russian barrage of missiles had struck the Ukrainian capital and some other parts of the country , killing at least 17 people, , wounding scores more , and destroying warehouses and logistics centers of major retailers . That night, Russia attacked using 115 Shahed-type drones , four Zircon Oniks anti-ship missiles , and 24 Iskander MS-400 ballistic missiles . The Ukrainian Air Force reported that it managed to knock out 98 drones, meaning that 17 drones and all of the missiles hit their targets . We'll say that again . All 28 missiles hit their targets . None of them were intercepted . The impact of these strikes could be heard all around the city as the explosions rattled windows and set . One resident who spoke to the BBC described it as the scariest night of the war . As to why Ukraine couldn't intercept those missiles, well, it boils down to a basic, yet extremely serious problem, the global shortage of interceptors . For much of the war, Ukraine has relied on a layered air defense system , with each layer meant to deal with a different kind of threat . The first layer is the cheapest and the most manpower intensive, and is focused on handling the threat of drones . Mobile fire teams mounted on pickup trucks, machine guns, searchlights, and thousands of soldiers watching and listening for Shaheds . Oleksiy, the deputy commander of a Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces mobile air defense unit, told the press that his unit, which is tasked with protecting Irpin, has historically used the .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun mounted on the bed of a pickup truck to battle Russian one-way attack drones . However, Russia quickly figured out how to make their drones fly faster and at higher altitudes beyond the range of the Browning, which leads us to the second part of the first layer, electronic warfare . Kyiv uses electronic warfare to jam a drone's guidance system before it