The developments observed in 2025, and the opening months of 2026, have confirmed how far Ukraine has come in the domestic production of long-range strike systems. This shift is not only a matter of incremental technological progress; it is quite possible the emergence of trends that may end up rewriting some of the rules of modern conventional warfare.

In the early years of the full-scale conflict, which began in February 2022, Kyiv’s ability to project power beyond the front line depended almost entirely on the political will of Western capitals and on deliveries of advanced weapon systems such as SCALP/STORM SHADOW and ATACMS. By late 2025, the picture looked very different.

Under wartime pressure, Ukraine’s defence industry has gone through an accelerated innovation cycle, developing, combat-testing and bringing into serial production a diversified ecosystem of weapon systems able to hit targets at ranges from roughly 150 km out to a declared 3,000 km or so. The result is a strategic strike capability that grants Kyiv far greater autonomy vis-à-vis the hesitations and political calculations of its Western partners.

This technical analysis focuses exclusively on systems of indigenous manufacture, deliberately excluding Western-supplied platforms in order to highlight more clearly the level of industrial and technological maturity reached by Ukraine’s military-industrial complex. For classification, we adopt the methodology proposed by analyst Fabian Hoffmann in a comprehensive study published on his Missile Matters blog at the end of 2025.

Unlike many taxonomies that privilege nominal range, Hoffmann uses three macro-categories based solely on payload, dividing effectors into:

- heavy: warhead mass above 200 kg;

- medium: warhead mass between 100 and 200 kg;

- light: payload below 100 kg.

This distinction is particularly useful because it is the warhead mass that directly determines which classes of target can be credibly threatened and what level of structural damage can be inflicted in a single strike. A heavy effector can take down a railway bridge or penetrate a buried command bunker, whereas a light system is optimised to hit vulnerable infrastructure such as certain elements of refining or fuel storage facilities or electrical substations, causing cumulative economic damage over repeated attacks.

The complete analysis is available in the latest edition of Future Warfare Magazine (FWMag 2/2026). Log in here and read it for free!

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